GOP Rep. Says Boehner ‘Put A Knife In The Back Of New Yorkers’ By Blocking Vote On Sandy Relief

Rep. Peter King (R-NY)

A furious Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took aim at his own party in a Fox News interview Wednesday, a day after House GOP leaders broke their promise to hold a vote on a Hurricane Sandy relief bill. King said the decision by the House Republican leadership to scrap a planned vote on a multi- billion aid package amounted to a “knife in the back” of those hit hardest by the bill. The Senate had approved a $60.4 billion aid bill last Friday, but the House move appeared to scuttle any chance of a bill before the new Congress begins Thursday.

King said that after the move, he feels no obligation to vote with his leadership and suggested that East Coast residents who contribute to the GOP are insane. King complained that Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor reneged on their promise to hold a vote on the package, without explanation:

In his explanation of the events of Tuesday night, he noted that neither Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) nor Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) offered any explanation for the broken promise:

KING: No one even told us, the Speaker walked off the floor, told an aide to the Majority Leader that the Congress was finished. There were no votes and they come back and told us. Listen, I’m not taking this as personal offense. I’m talking about the thousands of people in my district, hundreds of thousands of people throughout the New York-New Jersey area. Within 10 days after Katrina, $60 billion was appropriated. Nine weeks after Sandy, not one penny has been appropriated. And let me just make this one point. These Republicans have no problem finding New York when they’re out raising millions of dollars. They’re in New York all the time filling pockets with money from New Yorkers. I’m saying anyone from New York and New Jersey who contributes one penny to Congressional Republicans is out of their mind. Because what they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, it was an absolute disgrace. …

Why the Republican party has bias against New York, this bias against New Jersey, this bias against the Northeast. They wonder why they’re becoming minority party. Why we’ll be party of the permanent minority. What they did last night was so immoral, so disgraceful, so irresponsible. They’re supposed to be the party of family values. And you have families that are starving, families that are suffering, families that are spread all over living in substandard housing. This was a disgrace. They are inexcusable. And they have had it. As far as I’m concerned I’m on my own. They’re going to have to go a long way to get my vote on anything.

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King noted that while national Republicans were all-too-happy to put Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) out as a surrogate during the 2012 campaign, with this move they “knifed him in the back.”

In a separate interview on CNN, he added that Boehner refused to meet with him and yelled at Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), “I’m not going to meet with you people.”

A fellow New York Republican, Rep. Michael Grimm, echoed King’s remarks, calling the leadership’s move a “personal betrayal,” and noting that “the people of this country that have been devastated are looking at this as a betrayal by the Congress and by the nation, and that is just untenable and unforgivable.”

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The Senate vote: Rand Paul/Mike Lee 2016

The Senate vote last night was a touchstone event, a benchmark, if you will, to mark the progress of history. It is, in that regard, much like the Senate vote to approve George W. Bush’s trillion-dollar vengeance assault on Iraq to bag Saddam — and in retrospect it is hard to see any other purpose for that adventure. But the Senate vote to approve the invasion in October 2002, told us who was brave when it was time to be brave and those lions of the Senate, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Joe Biden, who approved, then disapproved, were not. It has been zero-sum, no-fault politics ever since; we continue to vote them in and advance them to greater leadership — even after astonishing incompetence and systemic state failures in the Middle East — because we are familiar with them, because they have been around so long, because we have become a blindly partisanized nation, because we don't really care. But we are at a sea change and two to watch at the quiet turning of the tides today are Rand Paul and Mike Lee, senators from Kentucky and Utah, who voted against the fateful "fiscal cliff" agenda last night. The century might start this year with them.
Three other Republicans voted against: Old souls Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Richard Shelby of Alabama and young’un Marco Rubio, whom the old-line nostalgicos see as one of their own. That is, as George W. Bush and Dan Quayle were selected by a passing generation in its twilight years, they would like to be Rubio if they could be young again. But they will not be and they will not get to choose this time. The Tea Party has laid a new footing in the heartland and it will find its bearings now and heading into 2016.

Paul and Lee have added strength, maturity and character to the Senate since assuming office in 2011. They and they alone in the Senate have brought the Tea Party’s passionate rants to responsible and effectively engaged government. We start again with them. Both should have their eyes on the Oval Office in 2016.

And Rand Paul in particular might consider a conspicuous trip to Israel, as all do who look to the Oval Office. It would clarify things about Dad. Because Ron Paul, who opposed the Israeli lobby’s efforts and the neocon adventures in wonderland, was unfairly caricatured as an anti-Semite in his opposition to the invasion of Iraq. And Rand Paul would find kinship with Moshe Feiglin, the liberty candidate for the Knesset who opposed American influence in Israel since 2001. Feiglin’s rise to the Knesset this month has already changed the culture and historical trajectory of Israel. Israel rises to a new phase and a generational shift this year and potentially America does as well. These two, Rand Paul and Moshe Feiglin, rise in the world together and possibly fate intends for them to do so.

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Drug-Resistant Malaria Flares As Funding For Research Tapers

Global health experts worry that a new breed of malaria that has arisen in South Asia could reverse trends in the fight against the disease, since it has proven resistant to the drugs usually used to treat malaria infections.

Cases of malaria are currently treated with a drug called artemisinin, which typically clears the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria’s symptoms from humans within about 24 hours. However, a new strain of the disease has sprung up on the Thailand-Myannmar border that has shown the ability to cling to its host for three days or more after the administration of treatment. Should this form of malaria spread, the results could be catastrophic:

“We know what will happen in Africa when resistance is bad because we’ve been there before in the 1990s with chloroquine (another anti-malarial drug) … millions of deaths,” [malaria researcher Dr Francois Nosten] warned.

“We must prevent artemisinin resistance reaching Africa, but we also need to control it for the people in Asia – for their future.”

Twenty years passed between the evolution of a strain of malaria resistant to the then-prevelant treatment of choloroquine in the same South Asian region before it migrated to Africa. While the disease does eventually fall to arteminsin treatment still, the inability of the patient to find relief from malaria’s high fevers is likely to raise the mortality rate among those infected with the new strain. In 2010, malaria caused the deaths of an estimated 660,000 people, with Africa having the highest infection rate of any continent.

That number has fallen in recent years, thanks to a concerted effort to halt the spread of malaria and other diseases by programs such as the Global Fund and the United States’ PEPFAR. However, the gains that have been made since a funding surge from 2004-2009 are proving fragile as budgets have leveled off. The World Health Organization’s World Malaria Report 2012 warned of the potential for backsliding as funding for anti-malarial bed nets, the best prevention for infection, has frozen.

Researchers in the region continue to strive towards new and improved drugs to treat malaria amid the uptick in new cases. Whether the research will yield results in time to halt the progress of new malarial strains is yet to be seen.

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The Fiscal Cliff Deal, By The Numbers

Last night, the House of Representatives passed the Senate’s compromise bill to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff.” The bill, dubbed the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012,” raised taxes on (some of) the wealthiest Americans, while punting several other budget decisions down the road, including whether or not the so-called “sequester” spending cuts will occur. Here are some important numbers from the bill’s resolution of the fiscal cliff’s tax side:

– The first major tax increase for the wealthy in 20 years. Allowing the expiration of some of the Bush tax cuts amounts to the first major tax increase for the wealthiest Americans since the 1990s.

– The Bush tax cuts expire for just 0.7 percent of taxpayers. The expiration will occur on income in excess of $400,000 (or $450,000 for a couple). This translates into “a little over 1 million Americans” according to the Tax Policy Center. The capital gains and dividend tax will also increase to 20 percent for wealthy earners.

– The top 1 percent will pay an average of $73,633 more in taxes. Bloomberg News noted that, “among households with incomes between $500,000 and $1 million, taxes would go up by an average of $14,812.”

– 77 percent of households will see a tax hike. Due to the expiration of a cut in the payroll tax, most workers will see their taxes increase slightly in 2013. The expiration of the payroll tax cut will deal a significant blow to the economy.

– $4 trillion in deficits and $600 billion in revenue. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will increase the deficit by around $4 trillion over the next ten years compared to a world in which all of the Bush tax cuts expired. However, it raises about $600 billion more in revenue compared to the policies that were in place in 2012.

– $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue. As Americans for Tax Fairness noted, “This bill raises $620 billion over 10 years, but $1.5 trillion in budget cuts were already enacted last year; that means for every one dollar in new taxes there have been 2.5 dollars in spending cuts to reduce the deficit.”

– Two million unemployed workers see benefits saved. Without the extension included in the fiscal cliff deal, millions of workers would have seen their federal unemployment insurance pulled out from under them.

– Estate tax giveaway costs billions. The estate tax rate will increase slightly to 40 percent this year with a $5 million exemption, but it would have gone to 55 percent with a $1 million exemption in the absence of a deal. As the Atlantic’s Matt O’Brien noted, “Only 3,730 households will pay the estate tax next year if the exemption is set at $5 million, versus 47,170 if it’s set at $1 million.”

The bill also extended provisions of the farm bill that will prevent milk prices from spiking and included an important provision to help underwater homeowners.

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Israel: Dems 'injected some adult supervision' into 'fiscal cliff' debate

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) argued Wednesday that Democrats provided "adult supervision" during the "fiscal cliff" debate and should be credited with avoiding automatic tax increases and spending cuts.

"There were elements of the bill that I did not like," Israel told CNN's "Starting Point." "But at the end of the day, it was House Democrats who injected some adult supervision, some pragmatism, a sense of compromise and solutions. That’s what the country wants."

The chairman of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said he wished "that the Republicans would have produced more votes" in support of the legislation, which passed on a 257-167 vote late Wednesday night. 

House Republicans were split on the bill, with 85 — including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — voting in favor. But 151 voted no, including high-profile defectors like Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

"The best they could do was 85, 86 votes," Israel said. "So even though they have the majority in the House of Representatives, it was House Democrats who stopped us from going off this cliff.”

The late-night vote will indefinitely extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts on all household income under $450,000, extend unemployment insurance and delay automatic spending cuts for another two months.

Israel also blasted House Republicans for tabling a vote on Hurricane Sandy aid until the next Congress. 

Republican leaders have argued the $60 billion Senate bill was bloated with excess spending, while a bipartisan group of legislators from New York and New Jersey — the areas hardest hit by the storm's landfall — have urged quick passage of the relief bill.

"Just when we avoided one cliff, the House Republicans threw us over another," Israel said. "We rushed to aid ... Kabul and Baghdad when they had damage, but when it comes to aid to New York and New Jersey, the House Republican leadership decided we weren't worth it. It is indefensible."

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Psaki: Obama won’t ‘play chicken’ over debt limit

Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Wednesday said the president was pleased to have a bipartisan tax deal pass Congress, but warned the White House wanted to quickly resolve the debate over raising the nation’s debt limit.

“Everyone in the White House, the president included, is happy to have this vote in the rearview mirror,” said Psaki, who served as Obama’s campaign spokeswoman, in an interview on CNN’s “Starting Point.”

Psaki said the White House hoped to avoid further protracted spending fights when negotiations begin on hiking the nation’s debt ceiling early in 2013 and the sequester kicks in in March. “Avoiding the fiscal cliff, making sure that the Congress votes to increase the debt limit, is not the White House’s and the president’s idea of a second-term agenda,” she said. 

“They’ve made no secret of the fact that they want to use that for spending cuts,” said Psaki of Republican lawmakers. “But there’s also the funding of the government, there’s the two-month extension of the sequester.”

President Obama on Tuesday night praised lawmakers for preventing a middle-class tax hike but cautioned Republicans not to use the debt ceiling to force another fight over spending. 

“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,” said Obama. 

“What the president was saying was, ‘I’m not going to play chicken with the debt limit. I’ve learned my lesson in 2011,’ ” Psaki said Wednesday. “This is something that impacts businesses, it impacts markets, it impacts the view of the world of the United States economy, and again, this isn’t something we should be fooling with.”

Psaki also rebuffed criticism from Democrats that the White House conceded too much in the tax deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. 

“Laws are not made by simply waving a wand and making it so. It involves compromise, it involves negotiation, and that’s what happened here,” she said.

Psaki said there was much that progressive Democrats “should be excited about in this package,” citing “extension of unemployment insurance, college tax credits, child tax credits, making the middle-class tax cut permanent.”

“Of course it wasn’t perfect, but Democrats have to be careful about not making the perfect the enemy of the good,” she added.

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Poll: Half believe 'country's best years are behind us'

A Gallup poll released Wednesday showed that entering the new year, half of all Americans believe the country's best years are in the past. Republicans are particularly discouraged, with nearly three-quarters saying that America's peak came before 2013.

The survey found that while 50 percent say the country's best years have passed by, 47 percent believe that greater times are to come. There is a stark partisan divide, however: While just under seven in 10 Democrats agree that "the country's best years are ahead of us," 74 percent of Republicans say they have already elapsed. Independents are also pessimistic about the future, although less so — 55 percent say the country's best years have passed, while 43 percent say they are still ahead.

Those surveyed were also split on their predictions for 2013's economic outlook. Just one-third of respondents said 2013 would be a year of economic prosperity, while 65 percent said they expected economic difficulty. But at the same time, more than half — 53 percent — predicted a year of full or increasing employment. Just 42 percent said the economy would lose jobs in 2013.

Americans also believe that prices would rise at a reasonable rate in the coming year, with 57 percent agreeing with such a prediction. Of those surveyed, 42 percent said prices would rise at a higher-than-normal rate.

"The 65 percent of Americans who predict 2013 will be a year of economic difficulty is one of the more negative responses to this question since Gallup first asked it in 1965," said Gallup's Frank Newport in a statement.

Americans surveyed before Tuesday's "fiscal cliff" deal also accurately predicted that taxes would rise in 2013, with 82 percent saying it was more likely they would rise than fall. A broad majority — 85 percent — also predicted the federal budget would not be balanced in 2013.

Americans also took a pessimistic look at American power, with three-quarters predicting a year of international discord and 57 percent saying the United States' global influence would wane. Those surveyed also see increasing violence at home, with 68 percent predicting a rise in crime rates.

"About two-thirds of Americans believe 2013 will be a year of rising crime rates, a more negative prediction than in either 1999 or 1998," Newport said. "Americans' views about crime this year were possibly affected by the tragic school shooting on Dec. 14 in Newtown, Conn., the day on which the current poll began."

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Five Pop Culture New Year’s Resolutions For 2013

It’s a new year, and that means a whole lot of new popular culture, whether it’s a crop of television shows centered on female characters, like FX’s The Americans or Showtime’s Masters and Johnson, the continuation of promising franchises like J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek: Into Darkness, or even just news on who will be directing the new Star Wars movies and potentially starring as Carol Danvers in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. But every year, I like to take some time out to explore things that are missing pieces in my own spotty pop-culture education, that give context to the larger trends that are emerging in film and television, or that I simply didn’t get a chance to catch in the previous year. These are my 2013 pop culture New Year’s resolutions. I’d love to hear yours in comments:

1. Finish Homicide: Life On The Street and Twin Peaks: I got through a chunk of Homicide in 2011, and the first season of Twin Peaks last year. And I can’t stop thinking about either one of them. I’m looking forward to finishing both for the simple pleasure of watching them, and for all the things I know that watching them will let me see in the rest of pop culture.

2. Read all of the competitors in the 2013 Tournament of Books: Judging the 2012 Tournament of Books, a competition that puts all kinds of novels, written in all kinds of styles, up against each other, was one of the most fun things I did last year. This year, I’ll just be an observer as a group of talented critics tries to sort between everything from the pulp of Gone Girl to the interrogations of Bring Up The Bodies. But I’m excited to catch up with the books I haven’t read, including HHhH, The Round House, The Fault In Our Stars, Arcadia, May We Be Forgiven, Ivyland, Dear Life, Where’d You Go Bernadette, Beautiful Ruins, and perhaps most of all, Chris Ware’s Building Stories.

3. Seven Samurai. Yojimbo. Ran. Throne of Blood. I don’t know enough about Asian cinema, or about Westerns, either. So it’s time to get my Akira Kurosawa on. I’m going to start with these four movies. And I’d love your recommendations for where to go once I’m done with those.

4. Watch Hatufim: Whether you think Homeland jumped the shark this season or gained adrenaline as it ramped up to the major terrorist attack that ended this season, the show is guaranteed to remain a key part of the prestige television landscape—and shows based on Israeli programs look to become an even more important part of the network television mix. I want to go back and see where Homeland came from and watch Hatufim, the Israeli show it’s loosely based on, especially as Gideon Raff starts work on American television shows in conjunction with Homeland‘s creators.

5. Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl: One of the most common complaints about Hollywood today is that it’s hamstrung by commercial concerns, chasing movies that will make hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than ones that will recoup modest gains but make more important points. But I’m curious about what kinds of movies couldn’t get made when there was a genuine blacklist. So I’m going to spend some time this year with the movies Louise Brooks made in Europe when it was difficult for her to work in the United States.

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Statement by the President on the Tax Agreement

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

11:20 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Happy New Year, everybody.

AUDIENCE:  Happy New Year, Mr. President. 

THE PRESIDENT:  A central promise of my campaign for President was to change the tax code that was too skewed towards the wealthy at the expense of working middle-class Americans. Tonight we've done that. Thanks to the votes of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, I will sign a law that raises taxes on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans while preventing a middle-class tax hike that could have sent the economy back into recession and obviously had a severe impact on families all across America.

I want to thank all the leaders of the House and Senate. In particular, I want to thank the work that was done by my extraordinary Vice President Joe Biden, as well as Leader Harry Reid, Speaker Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell. Everybody worked very hard on this and I appreciate it.  And, Joe, once again, I want to thank you for your great work.

Under this law, more than 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses will not see their income taxes go up. Millions of families will continue to receive tax credits to help raise their kids and send them to college. Companies will continue to receive tax credits for the research that they do, the investments they make, and the clean energy jobs that they create. And 2 million Americans who are out of work but out there looking, pounding the pavement every day, are going to continue to receive unemployment benefits as long as they’re actively looking for a job.

But I think we all recognize this law is just one step in the broader effort to strengthen our economy and broaden opportunity for everybody. The fact is the deficit is still too high, and we're still investing too little in the things that we need for the economy to grow as fast as it should. 

And that's why Speaker Boehner and I originally tried to negotiate a larger agreement that would put this country on a path to paying down its debt while also putting Americans back to work rebuilding our roads and bridges, and providing investments in areas like education and job training.  Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough support or time for that kind of large agreement in a lame duck session of Congress.  And that failure comes with a cost, as the messy nature of the process over the past several weeks has made business more uncertain and consumers less confident. 

But we are continuing to chip away at this problem, step by step. Last year I signed into law $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction. Tonight’s agreement further reduces the deficit by raising $620 billion in revenue from the wealthiest households in America. And there will be more deficit reduction as Congress decides what to do about the automatic spending cuts that we have now delayed for two months.

I want to make this point: As I've demonstrated throughout the past several weeks, I am very open to compromise. I agree with Democrats and Republicans that the aging population and the rising cost of health care makes Medicare the biggest contributor to our deficit.  I believe we've got to find ways to reform that program without hurting seniors who count on it to survive. And I believe that there’s further unnecessary spending in government that we can eliminate. 

But we can't simply cut our way to prosperity. Cutting spending has to go hand-in-hand with further reforms to our tax code so that the wealthiest corporations and individuals can't take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren't available to most Americans. And we can't keep cutting things like basic research and new technology and still expect to succeed in a 21st century economy. So we're going to have to continue to move forward in deficit reduction, but we have to do it in a balanced way, making sure that we are growing even as we get a handle on our spending. 

Now, one last point I want to make -- 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. Let me repeat: We can't not pay bills that we've already incurred. 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. 

People will remember, back in 2011, the last time this course of action was threatened, our entire recovery was put at risk. Consumer confidence plunged. Business investment plunged. Growth dropped. We can't go down that path again.

And today’s agreement enshrines, I think, a principle into law that will remain in place as long as I am President: The deficit needs to be reduced in a way that's balanced. Everyone pays their fair share. Everyone does their part. That's how our economy works best. That's how we grow. 

The sum total of all the budget agreements we've reached so far proves that there is a path forward, that it is possible if we focus not on our politics but on what’s right for the country. And the one thing that I think, hopefully, in the New Year we'll focus on is seeing if we can put a package like this together with a little bit less drama, a little less brinksmanship, not scare the heck out of folks quite as much.

We can come together as Democrats and Republicans to cut spending and raise revenue in a way that reduces our deficit, protects our middle class, provides ladders into the middle class for everybody who’s willing to work hard. We can find a way to afford the investments that we need to grow and compete. We can settle this debate, or at the very least, not allow it to be so all-consuming all the time that it stops us from meeting a host of other challenges that we face -- creating jobs, boosting incomes, fixing our infrastructure, fixing our immigration system, protecting our planet from the harmful effects of climate change, boosting domestic energy production, protecting our kids from the horrors of gun violence.

It’s not just possible to do these things; it’s an obligation to ourselves and to future generations.  And I look forward to working with every single member of Congress to meet this obligation in the New Year. 

And I hope that everybody now gets at least a day off, I guess, or a few days off, so that people can refresh themselves, because we're going to have a lot of work to do in 2013.

Thanks, everybody. Happy New Year.

 END              11:28 P.M. EST

The deal passed by an overwhelming majority in the Senate keeps income taxes low for the middle class and ensures that America will continue to invest in education, clean energy, and manufacturing to strengthen our economy and the middle class.

December 30, 2012 11:44 AM EST

In 2012, working with Joining Forces, American businesses exceeded the President's challenge to hire 100,000 veterans and military spouses and made a greater commitment for the future.

President Obama urges Congress to meet its deadlines and responsibilities, protect the middle class from an income tax hike, and lay the groundwork for future progress on more economic growth and deficit reduction.

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