March 14 (Reuters) - ProMetic Life Sciences Inc :
* US FDA grants orphan-drug designation to ProMetic's plasma-derived
plasminogen drug
* Says orphan drug designation is for the treatment of hypoplasminogenemia, or
type I plasminogen deficiency
* Source text * Further company coverage ((Bangalore Newsroom; +1 646 223 8780))
The most recent episode of Girls aired while I was at South By Southwest, and in a way I’m glad I’ve had some time to watch the episode slowly, and to think about it before writing about it, given the flood of reaction and debate to the half-hour of television.
The storyline that’s provoked the most commentary has been a sequence towards the end of the episode in which Adam, after running into Hannah while on a date with his current girlfriend Natalia, falls off the wagon, takes Natalia back to his apartment, and when she expresses some dismay at the state of it, orders her on all fours and has her crawl to her bedroom. What commences there clearly makes Natalia uncomfortable from the outset. When Adam pulls off her panties and begins trying to get her aroused, she notes she hasn’t showered that day, which Adam interprets only as an expression of concern for him, rather than as a tactful attempt to ask him to stop. They have short-lived penetrative sex, at which point Adam pulls out and prepares to ejaculate on Natalia. Though she only tells him not to come on her dress, an injunction he complies with, she is obviously deeply distressed after the event, telling Adam “I, like, really didn’t like that.”
Much of the analysis of the episode has centered on the question of whether Adam committed a sexual assault against Natalia. “‘No means no,’” wrote my friend Amanda Hess at Slate, “is not the only measure of consent.” “This episode asks us why we’re so, so careful not to call things rape, or why we think there’s an acceptable level of reluctance, coercion, or intimidation that can be part of a sexual encounter,” Margaret Lyons writes at Vulture. Adam is clearly a man with boundary issues, someone I’ve found creepy enough to justify the cops showing up and creating some distance between him and Hannah. And while I think that the fact that this episode has been so upsetting, confusing, and sparked such a powerful debate about the space between an outright no and a clear yes that’s so often interpreted as consent to sex or sexual acts, I actually found myself focusing on something else: the fact that Adam was also portrayed as miserable and upset at the end of the encounter, too.
This is not to say that Adam’s feelings about his encounter with Natalia are more important than her feelings. But in his question to Natalia after she made clear how upset she was, “Is this it? Are you done with me?” there are some interesting issues, and potential answers to the question of how to train men, not just women, to prevent sexual assault.
Part of the reason I was so struck by this episode of Girls is because I’ve been rewatching How I Met Your Mother for a piece on what that show says about contemporary relationships. And I’ve been struck by the extent to which that show both fetishizes Barney Stinson’s (Neil Patrick Harris) conquests, and how much his technique has to do with impairment and manipulation of consent. On New Year’s in the first season he picks up Natalya, whose most important trait seems to be that she hails from “The former Soviet republic of Drunk-Off-Her-Ass-Istan,” as Barney puts it. Lily asks Barney at one point “they’re blonde and drunk, isn’t that your type?” But I can’t think of a moment when the show ever discusses the impact of sobriety on consent—it’s just a running joke that Barney likes to, and is very good, at taking advantage of women who are heavily intoxicated. He’s also a liar, changing his presentation of himself so women will be more likely to consent to sex with him. ” I’ve told some outrageous lies. I have told women that I was famous, a war hero, that sex with me would cure their nearsightedness,” he explains in season seven. And at one point, these deceptions do seem to cross over into a clear, and what ought to be ugly, taking of sexual advantage, when Barney explains that he likes to meet women new to New York “with no idea what a casting director could legally ask her to do, hold, or lick during an audition.”
Women get emotionally hurt by Barney, including Nora, on whom he cheats with Robin, Quinn, who he realizes he doesn’t really trust, and the ten women (to date) who have named him in paternity suits. And Barney is occasionally hurt by his own womanizing, as is the case when he loses Nora, who can’t forgive him for cheating, or when he realizes he needs to reform for Robin to be able to truly love and ultimately marry him. But How I Met Your Mother is decidedly vague on the question of whether Barney’s seduction techniques or the kinds of sex he’s had with someone have ever hurt someone, in part because that would require the show to reckon more carefully with the consequences of the very thing that made Barney a breakout character: his riff on the pick-up artist playbook. Admitting that Barney Stinson might have had sex with someone without appropriately gaining her consent would make the character decidedly unlegendary—as would the idea that Barney was miserable after one of his conquests precisely because he realized that he hadn’t obtained consent, and felt guilt, shame, and remorse. So even as Barney moves into marriage, his legacy of banging drunk chicks or manipulating women into having sex with him because they need work will remain largely unexamined, and largely valorized.
Girls may not have a clear name to offer up for what Adam did to Natalia, and outside commenters may argue about what it is that happened to her. But the show’s done something valuable in stripping away a Barney Stinsonized-patina of valor from the idea that consent is a hurdle, rather than a gateway to better sex. If Barney Stinson is an advocate for a world where you have as much sex, and as many kinds of sex, with as many women as possible, Adam is an illustration of what happens somewhere along the way, when you assume that lack of a total no means a yes. Because for some woman, somewhere, that’s precisely what it will mean.
And I think that’s a conversation worth having. As Irin Carmon has pointed out in Salon, trying to educate men not to rape women may not much to deter predators for whom lack of consent and the power involved in sexual assault is precisely the point. And it’s worth acknowledging that what Carmon describes as a potentially wishful stereotype of “a basically ‘decent’ young man who, were it not for too much alcohol and too little communication, would never do such a thing,” is precisely that. But for men who live in the space where Adam appears to live, that area between no and yes, maybe one way to change the dynamic is to eroticize a clear yes. “I like how clear you are with me,” Adam tells Natalia earlier in the episode. But he’s not actually clear with her about what he wants and enjoys sexually in the way he was with Hannah—at least not before ordering Natalia to her knees. Because he’s not capable of being honest with her and running the risk that if he asks her to do the things he did, that she’ll say no, Adam ends up at minimum humiliating Natalia and putting himself in a position where he feels ashamed and upset, a position I can’t imagine is preferable to having been turned down. Adam may have convinced himself that he had Natalia’s consent. But after he was done, I don’t think he could have possibly convinced himself that he actually had excellent sex.
That’s the crux of an idea television should be better at communicating, that consent isn’t just permission, it’s a way for sex to be better, and that it’s something that happens at every step along the way. It’s one thing to teach people that “no means no,” though apparently some people are impervious to accepting that dictum. It’s another entirely to teach people that it takes a clear and affirmative yes to get to a real yes.
By Felix Kramer and Max Baumhefner, via Switchboard
When it comes to consumer products, environmentalists generally don’t encourage people to buy new and buy now. But that’s what we’re about to do because electric cars are significantly cleaner than gasoline vehicles, and driving one can save you serious cash at the pump.
Perhaps you’ve already thought about buying an electric car, but dismissed the idea for one reason or another. Let’s look at some common misconceptions, and offer some good reasons why you might want to reconsider:
“I should drive my current car into the ground.”
“Hold on,” you say to yourself, “I already own a car that gets 25 miles a gallon. I want to get my money’s worth from the investment.” The sooner you start saving gas, the better it is for the planet and your pocketbook. There’s no use in throwing good money after bad at the pump, and the sooner you sell your current car, the less money you’ll lose to depreciation.
“I’d just be switching my pollution from the tailpipe to the power plant.”
If you want to go green, driving on electricity is a clear winner. Using today’s average American electricity mix of natural gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, wind, geothermal, and solar, an electric car emits half the amount of climate-changing carbon pollution per mile as the average new vehicle. In states with cleaner mixes, such as California, it’s only a quarter as much. To find out how clean your electric car would be today, plug your zip code into the EPA’s “Beyond Tailpipe Emissions Calculator.” You should also know that, because old coal plants are increasingly being retired and replaced by cleaner and renewable resources, plug-in cars are the only cars that become cleaner as they age.
“What I save on gas, I’ll pay in electricity.”
On average US residential electricity rates, driving one of today’s electric cars is the equivalent of driving a 27 mile-per-gallon car on buck-a-gallon gasoline. It’s been that way for the last four decades, and is forecasted to stay that way for the next three decades. Experts basically throw up their hands when asked to predict the price of gas next year, let alone 30 years from now. One thing we do know: the price at the pump will jump up and down due to geopolitical events beyond our control. If you’re tired of that rollercoaster, call your local utility to ask about electricity rates designed for plug-in cars.
“I’ll hold off until prices go down and there are more places to charge.”
If you’re thinking you’d be better off waiting for a cheaper, better electric car, and a charging station on every block, consider the following:
Modern electric cars start well below $30,000. Even better, there’s a federal tax credit worth $7,500, and states like California have rebates of up to $2,500 — which means you can buy an electric car for under $20,000, or lease one at a very attractive price. Still thinking of waiting for a better deal? Those incentives won’t last forever.A variety of high-quality electric cars are available today. There are over 80,000 of them on America’s streets, with the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius Plug-in, and Tesla Model S leading the pack.Public charging stations are proliferating rapidly, but you don’t need to wait for them to be as abundant as gas stations. Drivers of plug-in cars enjoy fuel that comes to them, relying on home charging to meet the vast majority of their needs.“I often need to drive farther than electric vehicles can go without recharging.”
Broadly speaking, electric cars come in two flavors: all-electric and plug-in hybrid. The second has no range limitations whatsoever; they have batteries sufficient for normal trips (between 10 and 40 miles, depending on the model), and they become efficient gasoline hybrids for longer trips. If you want one car to do it all, a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius Plug-in, Honda Accord Plug-in, Ford Fusion Energi, or Ford C-Max Energi is a great option.
If, however, your household has more than one vehicle, an all-electric is an ideal “second car” you’ll end up using most of the time. All-electrics, such as the Nissan Leaf, Ford Focus EV, Mitsubishi-i, BMW Active-E, Fiat 500 EV, Coda, Chevy Spark EV, Honda Fit EV, or Tesla Model S, have ranges between 60 and 265 miles, more than enough for the daily commute. When it comes time for the long road trip, you can always take the other car.
When you get behind the wheel of an electric car, you’ll experience the joy of full torque from a standstill and a super-quiet cabin. You may have a hard time going back to a machine that relies exclusively on thousands of explosions of fossil fuel every minute.
If you’d like to try a plug-in outside of a dealership, you can find an owner on DrivingElectric.org to give you a spin. You’ll be surprised in ways you could never expect, and you’ll never get tired of driving on a clean fuel for the equivalent of buck-a-gallon gas.
Felix Kramer is an entrepreneur who founded CalCars.org in 2002 to promote plug-in hybrids, and DrivingElectric.org in 2002 to connect curious people with enthusiastic plug-in drivers. Max Baumhefner is a Sustainable Energy Fellow with NRDC. This piece is reprinted from Switchboard with permission.
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During a hearing before the House Military Personnel Subcommittee Wednesday, American civilian and military leaders issued lawmakers a stark warning: federal budget cutbacks under the so-called “sequester” will leave veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other mental illnesses without access to the health care that they desperately need.
The sequester cuts will force multiple governmental departments to cut back on programs or eliminate them entirely. Charged with taking care of the staggering percentage of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans with PTSD, the Defense Department has had to increasingly rely on civilian mental health specialists to address the backlog. In fact, out of the 2,118 psychologists, 809 psychiatrists, and 2,533 social workers now employed by the military — a substantial increase over past years — over half are civilians. But under sequestration, the Department has been bracing for massive cuts to this civilian workforce, and is preparing to send notices to “more than 800,000 Defense Department civilian workers telling them that once-a-week unpaid furloughs will begin in April and continue for 22 weeks.”
As Military.com reports, that is particularly problematic for the military when it comes to these civilian mental health specialists because “they have options to seek employment elsewhere” and might be tempted to do so seeing as they are not exempt from the furloughs:
Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army’s surgeon general, has lobbied to exempt the mental health specialists from furloughs to retain them for treating PTSD. The Pentagon has said that 20 percent of the civilian workforce will be exempt from furloughs. However, it did not look like the mental health specialists would receive that exemption, said Col. Rebecca Porter, the chief of Behavioral Health in Horoho’s office.
“We value these individuals greatly,” Porter said of the mental health workers. “If they start to go out the door, it’s going to take a lot longer for us to rebuild that” mental health workforce, Porter told a defense writers breakfast Tuesday.
“We have in the past offered retention bonuses, but that’s not specifically on the table now,” said Porter, a former military police officer and now a clinical psychologist whose main task is treating PTSD in the Army.
Her comments echoed those of Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, who told a Senate hearing last month that “before sequestration, we allocated the dollars and positions to increase military and civilian mental health providers.”
“The problem is there are not enough out there,” Odierno said. “Now what’s going to happen is we’re going to have to reduce the number we already have.”
The officials’ testimony is a clear-cut demonstration of the real world consequences brought on by budget cuts that lawmakers and the media tend to discuss in rather shallow terms. Budget cuts to military health care programs are also particularly cruel considering the already-massive backlog of over 900,000 veterans’ benefit claims — a problem that will be exacerbated as more military personnel return home from the waning Afghan war. Those veterans will already be plagued by poverty and a bleak economic outlook when they return home — and under sequestration, their mental health care outlook is even worse.
In agreeing to a temporary increase in the debt ceiling, the House attached several conditions. One was a commitment to pass a budget that will balance within 10 years. Meeting that goal is important not only for the country’s fiscal future but also for the future of the country’s health care.
Health care entitlements are a major driver of federal spending. In 2011, Medicare and Medicaid alone accounted for nearly a quarter (more than 23 percent) of all federal spending.
In his Inaugural Address President Obama stated, “We must make hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of the debt.” The President is right. But his own health care law has made the situation worse, not better.
When Obamacare was passed, its supporters insisted the law would “bend the cost curve down” and “reduce the deficit.” Today, reality has set in. The Congressional Budget Office estimates Obamacare will add almost $1.6 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years. It obligates an estimated $1 trillion for subsidies to individuals for purchasing coverage through the government exchanges and $644 billion for states agreeing to expand their Medicaid programs. To help pay for the new entitlements, it takes over $700 billion out of an “old” one—Medicare, a program already teetering on the brink of insolvency. It also relies on unsound and unreliable savings, shifty Washington budget gimmicks, and imposes over $800 billion in new penalties and taxes that affect all Americans.
America can’t afford health reform done this way. The House should start with repeal of Obamacare. But most urgent is to stop the most costly provisions of Obamacare slated to take effect next year. Specifically, Congress should eliminate the exchange subsidies and the enhanced federal match for the Medicaid expansion. Stopping these provisions would save the federal government more than $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
Politically, restraining these future obligations should be easy. There are no current beneficiaries, hence ending it would affect no one.
Although the thrust of the law is still a year away, the flaws of Obamacare are well documented and continue to grow. Most recently, news that insurance premiums were growing by double digits raised new questions about whether this health care law can actually work as the authors intended.
Desperate to deflect attention away from its failures and shortcomings, defenders of Obamacare are rolling out the next phase of Obamacare. Ideas such as strengthening the individual mandate penalty, expanding the powers of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and squeezing out more efficiencies by adding even more government regulations. Evidently, they think the way to “fix” Obamacare is to double-down.
That approach, of course, assumes that to more price controls and more regulations will solve the country’s fiscal and health care crisis.
On paper, price controls and regulations may appear to reduce spending. The appearance of savings often lures support for such policies. But, price controls and government regulations don’t necessarily curb health care costs and have an inescapable real-world cost that doesn’t appear on paper: rationing of medical care.
There is a better way to tackle coverage and health care spending without turning personal health care decisions over to the government. Instead of advancing a health care system dictated by the government, Americans should have access to coverage of their choice where insurers and health care providers compete to provide the best care at the best price. The Heritage Foundation has outlined such a plan in its Saving the American Dream proposal.
The President and his defenders are obviously ready for another fight on health care. With the pledge of bringing the federal budget to balance in 10 years, the House of Representatives appears poised to do the same. If leaders in Washington are serious about getting spending—including health care spending—under control, they must get the policy right. That starts with stopping Obamacare’s unaffordable new entitlement spending and focusing on fixing the current entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid, to ensure their solvency without bankrupting future generations.
-Nina Owcharenko is director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies and its Preston A. Wells, Jr. Fellow.
First appeared in Real Clear Politics.
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Sen. Kirsten GillibrandSen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is bringing the ongoing crisis of sexual assault in the military into the spotlight, hoping to use a recent outrageous case as a springboard to change. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel, chaired by Gillibrand, met on Wednesday to begin the process of reforming the military justice’s handling of sexual assault cases, speaking to panels of both survivors of sexual assault in the military and top military law experts.
Gillibrand appeared on MSNBC on Thursday to present the hearing’s findings, leaving host Andrea Mitchell stunned. Over 19,000 allegations of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) were made in 2011 alone, but as Gillibrand informed Mitchell there were only 2,400 cases where action was taken. The disparity, according to Gillibrand, comes from fear of retaliation and “not being able to stay in the military and having no ability to be promoted.”
Both women shared their disbelief that the military justice system could take such a lax approach to a clear problem:
MITCHELL: I don’t understand the Military Code of Justice, in that it was a reason for dismissal for expulsion from the military until last year, if you violated Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Yet, if you were found guilty in a military court of a criminal assault, of rape, you could go back to your unit. How is that possible?
GILLIBRAND: It’s outrageous and it’s something that should outrage every American. When we look at our best and bravest, our strongest, our most courageous. When you enter the military, you may expect to lose a limb. You may expect to lose your life. But no one should be expecting to be assaulted or raped by one of their colleagues.
Watch their exchange here:
The permissive culture towards sexual violence Gillibrand described was underscored by the testimony of former Sgt. Rebekkah Havrilla. Havrilla told the subcommittee of the U.S. Army’s failure to provide proper assistance following several instances of alleged sexual assault and rape. At one point, an Army chaplain told Havrilla “that the rape was God’s will and that God was trying to get my attention so that I would go back to church.”
“Rape and assault are violent, traumatic crimes, not mistakes, leadership failures or oversights in character,” Anu Bhagwati, Co-Founder of the Service Women’s Action Network told the panel. Bhagwati offered a series of possible reforms to the military criminal justice system to the senators, including opening civil courts to military sexual assault victims.
Currently, the Uniform Military Code of Justice features an article that allows a commanding officer through his or her “convening authority” to overturn the conviction of a jury in courts-martial. Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin used that ability last week to overturn Lt. Col. James Wilkerson’s conviction of sexual assault, waive the one-year prison sentence, and reinstate Wilkerson in the Air Force. Under the law as written, Franklin’s decision can’t be overturned by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of the Air Force.
Wilkerson’s reinstatement has sparked outrage from both houses of Congress and prompted a review of the statute in question by the Department of Defense’s top lawyers. A bill has already been introduced in the House of Representatives related to the Wilkerson case. Reps. Jackie Spiers (D-CA), Bruce Braley (D-IA), and Patrick Meehan (R-PA) put forward the bill on Tuesday to strip commanders of their ability to overrule juries and lessen sentences.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report on effective marginal tax rates for low-income workers.[1]
An effective marginal tax rate as defined by the CBO is the change in taxes and change in government benefits associated with increases in income. Because tax rates and government benefits change as income changes, an individual’s effective marginal tax rate can rise and fall drastically as he works more hours.
While much focus in the past two years has been on the top end of the income scale—the “Buffett Rule,” the “1 percent”—the effects of taxation and government benefits are severe among the bottom 1 percent as well. With marginal effective tax rates exceeding 60 percent in many cases, the tax and benefit structure actively discourages earned success.
There are five lessons from the CBO report that policymakers should learn.
Lesson #1: Unintended Consequences Are Important.
The architects of policies such as Section 8 housing or food stamps never intended to create a poverty trap. But as benefits are added up, the combined effect is to steadily devalue earned income.
Chart 1, adapted from the CBO report’s Summary Figure 1, shows the futility of work for a single parent with one child. If he does not work at all, he receives $19,300 in government benefits. If he instead earns a salary of $30,000—which is full-time work at $15 per hour—he has disposable income of $28,000. This means that he is working full-time for only $8,700 per year more than if he did not work at all, making his effective take home wage $4.35 per hour ($8,700/2,000 hours per year). Is it rational to expect someone to work hard for such a low wage?
Lesson #2: Policymakers Should Think Dynamically.
Most government benefits aimed at the poor have “static” justifications. That is, a program to provide health care to the poor is predicated on their current poverty. But it may have important prospective effects. Once the program comes into existence, it changes the costs and benefits of staying in school, working, and even marrying. Some of the worst policies of the 20th century were those that penalized responsible fatherhood, as the Moynihan Report[2] famously addressed in 1965.
Lesson #3: The Main Argument in Favor of the Minimum Wage Is Weak.
Those who favor raising the minimum wage generally appeal to the idea that those working low-paying jobs need to increase their consumption more than others. But the CBO’s research shows that in the relevant income range, the marginal effective tax rate is above 65 percent for the example single parent (Chart 2, adapted from the CBO report’s Figure 2, page 7). Thus, a minimum wage increase of 10 percent would increase the single parent’s take-home pay by less than 4 percent—if he kept his job, which is no sure thing, since increases in the minimum wage hurt the job prospects of such workers.[3]
Meanwhile, the arguments for lowering the minimum wage are strong: Competitive wages employ more people, keep more businesses open, and employ those in greatest need of a job.
Lesson #4: Obamacare Makes the Problem Worse.
The phase-out of “Premium Assistance Credits” significantly raises the marginal effective tax rate for a single parent earning between $22,000 and $62,000 per year (see CBO, Figure 7, page 26). This is an example of a program that raises marginal tax rates without “raising taxes.” The government collects less revenue than before—in fact, it pays out a handsome benefit—but discourages work even more.
Lesson #5: Poverty Is Poorly Measured.
As The Heritage Foundation has argued elsewhere,[4] poverty statistics that measure only earnings are poorly defined. The CBO report shows that even for some of those with no earnings at all, social programs in the U.S. provide enough disposable income to elevate them above the poverty line. The example single parent, when earning nothing at all, receives benefits worth 128 percent of the federal poverty line.
Technical Insights
Beyond the substantive lessons that can be drawn from the report, note four technical insights:
This year is even worse than 2012. With the expiration of the temporary payroll tax cut, marginal tax rates rose 2 percentage points for most earners.The CBO’s calculation of government benefits overstates the benefit. Many government benefits are distributed by means other than cash: health care, housing, and food stamps, for example. While there are good reasons for doing so, economics shows that people would prefer to receive cash. If they chose to spend the cash in exactly the same way, then they would be no worse off. If they made other choices, they would (by revealed preference) be better off. Thus, the benefits of government programs are less than the total spent on behalf of recipients. That means that the real effective marginal tax rates presented here might also be overstated. At the same time, there are non-monetary costs to government programs and ample non-government costs to work, all of which interact with the costs measured by CBO.Income is not the only variable. Tax and benefit policies are extraordinarily complex. The interaction of income, taxes, and benefits can vary by number of children, student status, age, and state, to name a few. Policies can have dynamic effects on choices other than how many hours to work—people may be more (or less) likely to move, marry, or commit crime depending on policies.Composition matters. Not everyone who files a tax return on earnings of $10,000 is similar. The CBO report wisely uses the example of a single parent with one child to avoid compositional fallacies when comparing different income ranges. A single adult earning $20,000 may be more affluent than a married couple with children earning $30,000.Common Sense from the CBO
The high marginal effective tax rates, and their effects on regular people, have long been noted by economists.[5] In the United Kingdom, experts recognized the poverty trap created by government policy and initiated a major reform of the social welfare system, which will begin taking effect in 2013.[6] Casey Mulligan has contrasted the British simplification of welfare with growing complexity in the United States.[7]
With the tax code ripe for reform, policymakers should remember: Marginal tax rates are dangerously high for some on the lower end of the pay scale.
—Salim Furth, PhD, is Senior Policy Analyst in Macroeconomics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.
[5]Harvard professors Jeff Frankel and Jeff Liebman relate one woman’s experience to the economic research on the “poverty trap” created by government policies. See Jeff Frankel, “Effective Marginal Tax Rates on Lower-Income American Workers,” Jeff Frankels Weblog, February 2008, http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/blog/jeff_frankels_weblog/2008/02/08/8/ (accessed December 20, 2012).
Marco Rubio complained about his critics during a speech before the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) on Thursday afternoon, saying that Democrats didn’t “respect” him or his policy positions.
Rubio joked about his much-publicized sip of water during the GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union address and appeared on stage with a tray of water glasses, before complaining about feeling judged for opposing marriage equality, access to reproductive health care services, and the science behind climate change — suggesting that his positions should be respected no matter how out of step they are with mainstream consensus:
RUBIO: I respect people who disagree with me on certain things, but that means they have to respect me too. Just because I believe states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot. Just because we believe that life, all human life, all life, all human life is worthy of protection in every stage of its development doesn’t make you a chauvinist. In fact, the people who are actually close minded in American politics are people who love to preach about the certainty of science in regard to our climate, but ignore the absolute fact that life begins at conception.
Watch it:
Rubio is in fact behind the curve on LGBT rights, women’s health, and climate change. As a growing number of Americans are growing more tolerant and accepting of same-sex unions, believe that women should be able to afford contraception, and see climate change as a real threat to the planet, Rubio seems stuck in the past.
He wouldn’t take a position on legislation that would prohibit employers from firing employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identify and wouldn’t say “whether same-sex couples should receive protections under immigration law.” Rubio has introduced legislation that would allow employers to deny women access to birth control, voted against the motion to proceed to debate the Violence Against Women Act, and still thinks that the existence of global warming is up for scientific debate.
Rather than wonder why his critics disagree with him, Rubio should be willing to deal with the consequences of the policies he espouses and how some perceive and interpret them.
Office of the Press Secretary
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room12:53 P.M. EDT
MR. CARNEY: Sparse crowd. Must be the weather. How is everyone today? Thanks for being here.
Before I take your questions, I would just like to note that earlier today the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send the full Senate an important piece of legislation to help keep weapons of war off America’s streets. As you know, banning military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines is an important piece of the President’s plan to reduce gun violence.
We urge Congress to swiftly vote on and pass this legislation and other common-sense measures like requiring a background check for all gun purchases and cracking down on gun trafficking and straw purchasing. There’s been significant progress this week on these proposals, and the President welcomes that. We urge Congress to keep it up.
With that, Julie.
Q Thank you. On that topic, Senator Feinstein was asked whether she wanted to see more assistance from the President in trying to pass the assault weapons ban. What is he going to be doing now to try to get that passed? Is he going to be doing more, as Senator Feinstein asked for?
MR. CARNEY: Well, the President, as you know, in the wake of Newtown, asked the Vice President to head up an effort to pull together a comprehensive plan for reducing gun violence in America, and that work was done very quickly and the result was the proposal that the President and the Vice President announced, which has many elements -- some of it legislative, some of it executive actions. And we are moving forward on all of it. And we are working with Congress on the legislative aspects of this -- the President is directly -- and we are obviously moving forward on the executive actions.
I think the question is a great opportunity to remind everyone that in his conversations with lawmakers, including those with Republicans, the President has been raising a number of issues, not just the need to reduce our deficit in a balanced way and not just raising the question of whether or not we can find common ground in pursuit of that, but also whether we can continue to work on the bipartisan progress that we've seen on comprehensive immigration reform and on measures to reduce gun violence.
So the engagement that we've all been talking about and you’ve been writing about encompasses not just budget issues but precisely these issues. So that is some of the assistance the President is providing directly, and he will continue to do that.
Q A lot of the concern among gun control advocates when it comes to the assault weapons ban is not just that Republicans are going to vote against it, but that Democrats who are in conservative-leaning districts or senators from more conservative states are going to vote against it. So does the President want those Democrats to take a tough stand and vote for this assault weapons ban, or does he understand this political reality that they’re living in?
MR. CARNEY: The President understands that these are tough issues. If they weren't, they would have been done. If this weren’t a tough issue, the assault weapons ban would not have expired and not been renewed. The President, as senator and since he became President, has always supported restoration of the assault weapons ban and he strongly supports the legislation that Senator Feinstein is moving forward. And he is having conversations with and has had conversations with lawmakers in both parties about all the aspects of his gun control -- or rather gun violence proposal, including his support for the assault weapons ban, and he has encouraged lawmakers to support it.
He understands that these are tough issues, but he makes the point in every conversation he has about this that nothing he has proposed in all the measures would take a single firearm away from a single law-abiding American citizen. He is a supporter of the Second Amendment rights of American citizens, and he made clear that his proposals would reflect his support for the Second Amendment, would make sure that we honor Americans’ Second Amendment rights, but that as we did that we also did the things that we can do to reduce gun violence in America, to try to reduce the Newtowns and the Auroras that take place too often in our country, as well as the less notable or newsworthy shootings that happen all the time.
And that's what he believes we can do together, Democrats and Republicans -- Americans coming together -- because the victims, they’re not identified by political affiliation. Six-year-olds, 7-year-olds, they’re not Republicans or Democrats.
Q On another topic -- I know that we're going to be having a briefing later today on the Mideast trip, but I'm wondering if the U.S. has any reaction or comment on the formation of the Israeli coalition that’s --
MR. CARNEY: We don’t. We obviously understand the process that’s underway. We look forward to the trip -- the President looks forward to the trip very much so. Those of us who will be fortunate enough to go along with the President are looking forward to it. And we are outside observers to government formations and will remain so.
Steve.
Q After today’s talks, what happens then? I ask about because in the ABC interview the President said at some point he would step back from the process and let the two sides talk to each other. Are we at that point now?
MR. CARNEY: No. And the President will continue to engage. He will continue to have conversations one-on-one, in groups, and in different forms with lawmakers of both parties about his priorities and agenda. And that includes not just budget issues but immigration reform, reducing gun violence, the need to invest in infrastructure and education, manufacturing -- the kinds of things that traditionally, as you and I know, Steve, from having covered it, have enjoyed bipartisan support. Infrastructure investment, for example, is an area that has traditionally won the support of Republicans and Democrats, Chamber of Commerce and labor, and we hope that that can be the case going forward. So he’ll continue those conversations.
What the President was referring to is that when it comes to the budget process, obviously when you get a budget measure, that is worked out first separately in the Senate and the House, and then there’s hopefully a conference that produces an ultimate resolution. It’s not something the President signs. It’s a product of the Congress.
But he is engaging in this process, making clear what his priorities are. He’s put forward very specific proposals. He will put forward a very specific budget. But ultimately, obviously, the Congress has to come together after each House passes a budget resolution and work at a compromise.
For the President, that compromise has to include balance. For the Senate, obviously, a compromise -- a budget has to include balance, when we talk about reducing our deficit moving forward. Whether there is, beyond that, compromise, whether there is success in finding common ground will really depend on whether Republicans are willing to accept the basic premise that Americans across the country support, which is that we should reduce our deficit in a balanced way, and when it comes to the specifics, that we not only need to get more savings from spending cuts and entitlement reforms, but we have to ask the wealthiest and the well-connected to pay a little bit more through tax reform; to close those loopholes that both the President and the Speaker of the House said needed to be closed -- caps and deductions; eliminate the perks that exist in the tax code for the few and the well-connected to make it more fair for middle-class folks and seniors so that they don’t have to bear the burden of deficit reduction alone.
As the President made clear, there remain enormous obstacles. There remains, at least in some corners of the Republican Party, an absolutist position that says, no way, no how, we won’t do balance; we won’t do any more revenue even though the public overwhelmingly supports that approach, even though there are voices in the Republican Party who believe that’s the right approach to take.
So we’ll see. It will be a choice obviously in the end that Republicans will have to make -- because the President has had very constructive conversations with Senate Republicans in particular who have expressed interest in and support for balance in deficit reduction as part of a bigger deal, entitlement reforms and tax reform that produces revenues for deficit reduction. We’ll see if there are enough members, Republican members of the “caucus of common sense” to allow for progress to be made on that particular issue.
But -- sorry, I know this is longwinded and I apologize. What is important to remember is that is not the only game in town. And the President hopes that Republicans are willing to join him in the center, if you will, in a balanced approach to deficit reduction, and we will see if that happens.
What absolutely has to happen, regardless of the outcome of that pursuit, is continued bipartisan progress on other initiatives that matter greatly to the American people. And that includes the very significant progress being made in the Senate on immigration reform by Republicans and Democrats; the progress we just talked about on measures to reduce gun violence; and all the other areas where the American people expect their leaders to come together and find common ground, and that the President believes we can find common ground.
Sorry for that longwinded answer.
Q No, that’s okay. Quickly on another topic. Senators Baucus and Hoeven had introduced legislation that would -- they would approve the Keystone pipeline, take the decision out of the administration’s hands. Is this something you’re aware of or something that you would --
MR. CARNEY: I had not seen that. But, of course, the progress of approving trans-border pipelines has been housed, if you will, in the State Department for quite a long time under administrations that have been both Democratic and Republican because of the international nature of those pipelines, the fact that they cross international borders. And that’s where this process has been houses and undertaken, and that’s at the State Department.
That process is moving forward and will result in a decision. I have no news to make on that right now. But that’s where it has been in the past and that’s where certainly tradition dictates that it should be now -- separated from politics and based on assessments made -- inputs provided at the State Department from a variety of agencies, as well as state governments and the companies involved and things like that. And then a decision is made whether or not to move forward.
Jim.
Q Does the President have an opinion on this recent decision by the TSA to allow passengers to bring small knives onto airplanes? I mean, to a lot of people in the aviation industry -- flight attendants, pilots, even some of the heads of the companies that run major airlines -- they say this is a terrible idea. What does the President think about it? Is that a good idea to bring small knives?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I confess I don’t have an opinion of the President to convey to you on that. I’m sure that the TSA has been asked this question and explained their thinking in making decisions like this -- DHA as well, I assume. My understanding as a layman -- I mean, as an observer, not as somebody who has worked the policy process, is that this has to do with an assessment of where the most likely threats are. But I really can't go beyond that because I don't know. I haven't had those conversations with TSA.
Q Is the White House prepared for what may become sort of a public relations nightmare in the coming days with so many school kids going on spring break and so many field trips coming to Washington? Needless to say, there are going to be lots of kids who have field trips and tours planned here at the White House, and they're going to be disappointed, and they’ll be coming up to the gates and so forth. Is the White House prepared for that? Are you going to be dealing with that? What's going to happen?
MR. CARNEY: We've been dealing with questions about this every day, quite a few of them. And as the President has said, and I and others have said, this is a very unfortunate circumstance that is a result of the sequester. And it was an unhappy choice that had to be made.
The Secret Service, like every other agency, is confronted with significant budget cuts and had to make decisions about how those imposed cuts would affect their personnel. And rather than asking for more furloughs, asking agents who are sworn to defend the lives of their protectees in service of their country, and asking for more pay cuts, they made the decision that they could not staff these tours, which are very labor-intensive for obvious reasons.
But it's very unfortunate. And I think it's always important to remember, of course, that when we talk about that unfortunate outcome or result of the sequester, that we recognize that the impacts of the sequester go beyond whether or not people are going to be able to have tours of the White House. And in some ways you might say some of the impacts are even more unfortunate -- families who lose slots in Head Start, or families who experience layoffs or furloughs around the country.
In upstate New York, I know there's concern because an airport control tower is being shut down because of the need to reduce spending by the FAA, and I know there's concern about this. This is a quote -- “Our military trains” -- this is Griffiss International Airport's control tower in Rome, New York. "Our military trains at Griffiss. The airport offers some of the most unique infrastructure in the Northeastern United States. And during Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Sandy, it was Griffiss International Airport that served as a staging area for relief efforts. It is short-sighted and unnecessary to close this control tower. And I implore the FAA to remove it from the closure list." And this is a result of sequester and that is a quote from Republican Congressman Richard Hanna.
Similarly, Blake Farenthold, from the Gulf Coast of Texas, talks about the civilian employees of Corpus Christi Army Depot and Naval Air Station could be -- and this is a quote -- "furloughed for up to 22 days. Our local airport towers in Corpus Christi and Victoria might also face extreme cuts." And again, that's a Republican member of Congress expressing that concern.
And they're right. And there are real impacts out there. And it's an unfortunate result of the arbitrary, across-the-board nature of the sequester cuts. That was the -- I use this term facetiously -- the genius in the design of the sequester -- it was written in a way to make it terrible. That was the purpose. Republicans and Democrats alike wrote it that way so that it would be so onerous that it would compel Congress to take alternative action to reduce our deficit in a more responsible way.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. And unfortunately, Republicans in Congress made the choice not to postpone the implementation of the sequester as they just did on January 1st for two months, to do it again so that kids would be allowed to go on tours, control towers wouldn’t close, various people wouldn't be furloughed or laid off.
Remember, the macro effect here according to outside economists is up to three-quarters of a million jobs lost. And that's a shame, because the economy is poised -- as we've seen again and again from data in various sectors of the economy -- the economy is poised to do well this year. And Washington shouldn't be taking action that inflicts harm on the economy. Washington should be taking action that helps it grow even more and helps it create jobs more. That's certainly what the President hopes to do with his measures.
Ann.
Q Thank you. One footnote on that and one on the CR. Has there been any progress in working on school groups getting in? And are there any specific cuts -- for instance, in the President's trip to the Middle East next week -- where people have been dropped from the manifest or actual trimming here at the White House?
MR. CARNEY: Again, the conversations we're having with Secret Service are ongoing about whether there's some way, in accordance with what the President said, to make some accommodations for some folks. But let's be clear. The decision to cancel tours generally won't be revised because the Secret Service made clear in its decision that the choice was that or furloughs and overtime cuts and the like. But those conversations continue and we'll let you know what the result of them is when we have one. I don't have any updates for you.
The President is going to Israel. He is President of the United States. It's entirely appropriate for the President of the United States to travel to the Middle East. And presidential travel requires, for security and other reasons, substantial staffing. And that's just the matter -- just like congressional travel paid for by taxpayers, require congressmen and women fly home on recess, as they'll do shortly, back and forth to their districts and states. And that's part of the job.
Q And real quickly, the CR is moving -- it will be one of the tests after this kind of shuttle diplomacy. The President has said he didn't want the chaos of the government running out of money. Will he take that CR even with the additional elements in it, additional -- voting on amendments to add to it, including ones that the ATF says would make permanent limits and things that weaken the ATF enforcement of gun laws?
MR. CARNEY: I haven't seen any reporting on that specific amendment. I'm not sure -- there have been a variety of amendments, as I understand, voted on -- some of them defeated, like I think -- according to Dana Milbank, columnist for The Washington Post, and I'm just citing him -- 35 votes now by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I'm not sure that's time well spent -- 35. I think that went down. But we’ll see. The President’s interest is in making sure we don't manufacture another crisis.
The process continues in the Senate. We’ll see what it produces. We certainly hope that we are able to continue to fund the government without drama, and focus on the challenge of trying to see if common ground can be occupied by both Republicans and Democrats when it comes to reducing our deficit in a balanced way.
Q Jay.
MR. CARNEY: Yes.
Q A couple questions on the President’s encounter with House Republicans. But first I want to ask you about the trip. I know we’re going to have a conference call later, but from the podium I’d like you to address a couple of things.
MR. CARNEY: Sure.
Q One, there is a perception in the region and here that this is largely a symbolic trip with very little substance attached to it. There will be very few, if any, deliverables and there will be nothing this President will bring to jumpstart the peace process -- which would contrast considerably with other trips previous U.S. Presidents have made to the region. Would you address that perception? And do you think that's either ill-founded, or do you have something else to tell us about may, in fact, happen that we’re not expecting?
MR. CARNEY: The President will travel to the region and have very important meetings with leaders in Israel, with leaders in Jordan, and with leaders in the West Bank. And he will also engage with the Israeli people and talk about what the U.S.-Israeli relationship is and will be in the future; the unshakeable commitment of this country to Israel’s security, as demonstrated by the actions he has taken as President that have led the Prime Minister and former Defense Minister and others to say that the United States -- that Israel has never had a closer security relationship with the United States than it has had with President Barack Obama.
This is a very important trip. And while it is true that we are not bringing a new proposal for the Middle East peace process, it is also true that we support efforts by the Israelis and the Palestinians to take positive action towards face-to-face negotiations that are the only way to resolve this issue, and to establish the two-state solution that both sides say they want and which is the solution that is best for the Israelis and the Palestinians.
And we made clear -- when either side does something unilaterally that we believe is counterproductive to that cause, we make our opinions clear about that. And that's true of Palestinian actions at the U.N. and Israeli actions on other issues. And so we’re engaged in this process. But ultimately it’s a process that will require negotiations between the two parties. And we will continue our efforts to facilitate that. But that is our position and that is what we believe is the only way to make this happen.
Q Is there a realistic hope the administration has that while the President is there, either side -- the Israeli government, though it’s still forming and its new coalition, or the Palestinian Authority -- will do anything publicly or make gestures to the other to expedite or move the process forward?
MR. CARNEY: I’m not in a position to predict what others might do. I know the President is looking forward to this trip, looking forward to his meetings, looking forward to the opportunity to engage not just with leaders but young folks in Israel and others. We’re going to have more details about his itinerary and what the trip will contain for you when we have a briefing later today. But I think it’s an important trip, and the President looks forward to it.
Q When the President was with House Republicans yesterday, there was a conversation about the perception that some House Republicans have that everything to the President is political. There was a conversation about 2014. And in the context of that, he said, well, look, if I was fascinated or obsessed with 2014, I wouldn’t be pushing immigration reform as aggressively as I am. That's a general description of what the encounter was. What did he mean by that?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I’m not going to read out verbatim quotes, alleged or otherwise, about what either the President said or House Republicans said.
The President has made clear that he wants to get things done, and there has been some commentary and speculation about the President is not serious about immigration reform because he wants to use it politically against Republicans, and nothing could be further from the truth -- which is why he has so persistently supported the bipartisan process underway in the Senate to achieve comprehensive immigration reform; why he has made clear that he wants fast action on this issue.
And, again, I will leave the assessments about what is the politically savvy thing to do, but I can guarantee you that’s not what he’s focused on. He thinks comprehensive immigration reform is the right thing to do, and he knows it can only happen with bipartisan support. He knows that it had bipartisan support back when he got to the Senate and supported legislation that was co-authored by Senator McCain and Senator Kennedy to achieve comprehensive immigration reform -- legislation that, at the time, had the support of the Republican President of the United States, George W. Bush. And he will continue to push for bipartisan progress, because it’s the right thing to do.
And that’s true on a whole host of issues. He’s not running for reelection -- the Constitution doesn’t let him. And he is focused on getting important things done for the country that help its economy grow from the middle out; that strengthen the middle class; that invests in our children so that they’re prepared to enter the workforce in a way that makes America more competitive, so that they can occupy jobs here in the United States that are well paying and part of the industries of the future; and that protect our seniors. And that’s his entire focus.
And that’s true when it comes to measures to reduce gun violence. It’s true when he encourages Congress to take up measures to help this turnaround in manufacturing in the United States to continue -- to build on that trend. And it’s true with everything he’s doing right now. And I think that’s the point, I think it’s fair to say, that he was making generally in his meetings thus far and that he’ll make today in his meetings. That’s what his focus is on.
Q And when Keystone came up, the President didn’t say anything particularly positive or particularly negative. Republicans took from that a kind of dispassionate assessment of Keystone, which some regarded as a hopeful sign. Should they have drawn that conclusion? And do you think and does the President think the entire issue of Keystone has taken on a unnecessary larger-than-life status with both the proponents and the opponents?
MR. CARNEY: I think these are excellent questions. What I can tell you is that no decision has been made on Keystone -- no final decision. I think the President -- I expect he was clear about that, as he has been. That process is housed over at the State Department. It is moving forward and will end in a decision. And when that decision is ready to be announced, it will be announced.
It is important to back up and look at the fact that, yes, Keystone became a political issue; it was inserted into legislation that disrupted the process and actually delayed it so that it had to be sent back. And these things are evaluated in a way they always have been. The fact is, even as we’ve dealt with Keystone and discussions about it, we have continued to move forward with an all-of-the-above energy strategy that includes increasing development of our natural resources in a safe and responsible way. And that’s led to record-high production of natural gas. It’s led to a situation where we’re importing less fossil fuel energy, less oil than we have from abroad for the past 16 years.
And if you look at outside analysts about where the United States is headed because of these trends, we’re headed towards a future that will make us more energy-independent and, therefore, more secure, less dependent on the resources of countries and regions that can be volatile, less subject to the fluctuations in prices of oil and gas. And that’s a good thing.
And the approach includes not just oil and gas, but as we’ve talked about a lot, all forms of energy, clean energy technology, which are very important. There’s enormous -- I think there’s some new information that’s come out recently about solar energy production in this country, which is extremely positive news. And that’s part of the comprehensive strategy the President’s taken, and that’s what he’ll continue to take for as long as he’s in office.
Welcome. How are you? Thanks for being here.
Q I want to get your reaction to a Washington Post editorial today on the issue of the White House tours. In their words, they say it’s akin to bureaucratic hostage taking, and that the pushback the administration is getting on it, in their words, is a proper comeuppance. They end the piece by saying, essentially, the President has the authority to do something about this, and it rests with him.
MR. CARNEY: Well, I think that represents a misunderstanding of the sequester, I guess, because the sequester is a law written and passed by Congress that is very specific about what can and can’t be done when it comes to implementation of the sequester. It was written that way, diabolically you might say, to make it so unfortunate, so onerous that it would never become law and that Congress would be compelled to find a better alternative way to reduce our deficit by $1.2 trillion.
The President has consistently put forward proposals that achieve that goal in a balanced way -- the submission to the super committee, his budget, his proposal to Speaker of the House John Boehner.
I would go back to what I said to Jim, this is an unfortunate and unhappy outcome to the sequester. And you’ve heard the President speak about that and I've spoken about it, and it’s a shame. Each agency has to make decisions about staffing and budget based on the cuts imposed by the sequester, and the Secret Service is not immune to that and the Secret Service has to focus on its core mission and the Secret Service had to decide, as I understand it -- and I refer you to them because these are choices they made -- whether or not they could continue to provide the substantial personnel and man-hours necessary for the tours, for the security of the tours, without furloughs and pay cuts. And the answer was they couldn't.
But that's a perfect demonstration of the kind of unhappy choices that the sequester presents, to the extent that it presents choices at all. So I would just say that it’s important to remember that while it is unfortunate in the extreme that kids, especially, who might have had tours scheduled will not get to see the White House because of this, it is at least as unfortunate, and some might say more unfortunate, that there are kids out there who won't be in Head Start because of the furloughs. It is at least as unfortunate, and perhaps more unfortunate, that control towers are being closed and therefore staffing -- people are being laid off or furloughed in small airports around the country, including these districts that I just cited where Republican members of Congress are concerned about it -- and they’re right to be. That's an unfortunate outcome because it affects families, real people and their livelihoods.
It’s unfortunate that if the sequester is allowed to stay in place, three-quarters of a million Americans will lose their jobs. That's a terrible outcome. Our economy will grow by a full half a percentage point more slowly because of the sequester if it’s allowed to stay in place. That's a dramatically unfortunate impact and effect.
So I think this is an illustration of why we shouldn’t have allowed the sequester to take effect. Republicans should have, in our view, done what they had done just a few months before, which is pass a short-term measure to delay implementation of the sequester, a measure that would have represented the balance that the public supports, asking the well-off and well-to-do to pay a little bit, not just seniors and middle-class families, and that then regular order could have continued as it is now, but without the sequester. That would have been the best option. That's certainly the approach we preferred.
Q I want to get your response to a report from Reuters. They’re citing a March 4th planning document that they say the administration is working on a plan that would give intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies broad access to a database of Americans’ financial data. A number of groups, including the ACLU and other privacy advocates, are expressing concern that innocent Americans’ financial data is going to be caught up in this. Can you tell us anything about this alleged proposal?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I think you said it well -- “alleged proposal.” I really don't have anything for you on that. I'm not aware of such a proposal.
Q Are you denying that --
MR. CARNEY: No, I'm saying I don't have -- first of all, it doesn’t sound like the report says there’s a plan in place. But, again, I'm not aware of it. But I'll take the question and we'll see if we can get an answer for you.
Q Just following very briefly on the TSA, and the answer may be that you have nothing to provide us on this, but given the fact that only a couple of weeks ago you brought Janet Napolitano to the podium and she said that the White House and the administration would do whatever it could to try to expedite the situation as long lines would get longer and the like -- does the White House believe that there is some value in changing the plan in terms of dealing with weapons, allowing knives on planes or anything not that specifically if that helps expedite the lines and helps make it easier for Americans to get through?
MR. CARNEY: Again, I don't have a specific White House reaction to a decision made on the merits based on what is best for security at airports, and I would refer you to TSA for that. I would say that it’s certainly the President’s interest that the TSA and other agencies that are responsible for the security of traveling Americans make wise decisions about how they ensure that security. But I don't have a specific reaction to this policy change.
Q And even without a reaction, does the President have any intent, or has he had any conversations -- even if you don't know his present opinion -- with any of the major players now -- flight attendants, pilots, the TSA people who are involved?
MR. CARNEY: I don't have any conversations like that to report.
Q Okay. Bill Gates this morning -- on a different topic -- said, sort of basically attacking all the federal government, but ultimately the President leads it -- and he said, “You don't run a business like this. This is a non-optimal path and that a business that is maximizing its effort would proceed along a different path.” Given the fact that there were more than a dozen significant CEOs in the White House Situation Room yesterday talking about a series of different topics, I'm curious what the number-one criticism the President heard from them yesterday was.
MR. CARNEY: Well, there were a couple of meetings yesterday of CEOs, one that focused I believe on cybersecurity; another one that focused on other areas like immigration reform. And I don't have a readout of criticism. I haven't seen Bill Gates’s statement, but I think if it refers to the way we've been careening from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis in our budget dealings, I'm sure the President couldn't agree more. Like most Americans, when we see this kind of unnecessary dysfunction in Washington, it’s not heartening, and Americans are justifiably frustrated by it.
And that's why we need to -- we could have avoided this pretty easily without anyone sacrificing principle. They could have just done what they’d done before and allowed time for the bigger discussion that we’re having about whether or not we can move forward in a bipartisan way to reduce our deficit.
The conversations we’re having now could have happened regardless of implementation of the sequester, and they probably would have happened regardless. They're separate issues. There was no reason to let the sequester go into effect. Republicans who had previously decried the sequester and the threat it posed -- warned about job loss, warned about negative effects on our national security -- turned around and then said it was a good thing and a victory for their party and a victory for the tea party and a home run. And that's just not how we see it because it’s real people who are affected.
And it doesn't help anything. I mean, this is why -- I think I talked about before, the sequester even as a deficit reduction measure fulfills none of the objectives of either party. Republicans say they want long-term deficit reduction; the sequester doesn't do that. Republicans say, correctly, that we need entitlement reforms and we need to deal with the challenges posed by our health care entitlements and the impacts they have on our budget -- and we agree; that's why the President has put forward entitlement reforms. The sequester does none of that.
Republicans tend to believe -- at least some of them or many of them -- that we should increase our defense budgets, not cut them. The President believes we have to have higher levels of defense funding than we’re getting from the sequester, and we’ve decried that. Now Republicans think the sequester is a good idea.
So they're not getting what they say they want -- no tax reform, no entitlement reform. But Americans are getting stuck with the consequences, and our economy is getting stuck with the consequences. Right when the potential for positive growth and job creation seems so evident -- when we look at data like sort of robust housing data, and we look at all the other things that we’ve seen that suggest that we could be, if we don't mess U.N., in for a very solid year, economically -- that would be good for the country, good for the middle class.
And if I can circle back, as it was in the 1990s, it is true today that the best approach to deficit reduction is one that has as a primary component economic growth. I mean, that's a key to reducing our deficit. It’s a key to doing it in a way that benefits the middle class. That's what the President believes.
Roger.
Q There are some reports that the President had telephone calls with the President of China today. Do you have anything on that? And did our President bring up Chinese hacking?
MR. CARNEY: I can confirm that the President spoke with President Xi today, and we will have a fuller readout of that conversation so I don’t have any details about it. He congratulated President Xi on his new positions. And this is a very important relationship and a very important series of issues that we deal with on a regular basis with the Chinese government.
And, again, I don’t have specifics from this phone call, but I can tell you that at every level, when we engage with our counterparts in the Chinese government, we talk about all the range of issues that are important between us, all the substantial economic cooperation, security cooperation, and also the issues where we have disagreements and concerns.
Q Did either President invite the other for a visit?
MR. CARNEY: I don’t have -- again, I don’t have a readout of that. I can tell you that the President and the administration look forward to working with President Xi and the rest of the Chinese government’s new leadership team, and that the President, as he has throughout his presidency, has put a priority on our relationship with China and the issue set that we deal with when we engage with our Chinese counterparts.
Q How do you cut the deficit this year in a way that promotes economic growth? I mean, any cut to spending or increase in taxes is contractionary as far as I understand it, but you just said you want to cut the deficit in a way that promotes economic growth.
MR. CARNEY: We want to reduce it over 10 years in a way that allows for economic growth, allows for the investments necessary in education and infrastructure and the like, that allows for longer-term economic growth.
I mean, I think you’re on to a good point here, which is one of the reasons why, at least initially, everybody decried the sequester or the fiscal cliff was the fact it would have been the combination of tax cuts for middle-class Americans, and the arbitrary substantial spending cuts imposed by the sequester would have had potentially a negative contractionary impact on the economy. So that’s just an argument for wise, thought-out economic policy -- not deficit reduction or balance for deficit reduction’s or balance’s sake alone.
Q I understand that, but you talk about the sequester’s effect on the economy this year. But everyone agrees that there has to be deficit reduction this year, whether it’s spending cuts or -- many agree that there need to be tax increases. That’s also contractionary. So how much worse is the sequester than the cuts that everybody, including you, agrees need to be done this year?
MR. CARNEY: Well, that’s why the sequester was written in a way that was arbitrary, so that it was a blunt instrument instead of a scalpel, and had -- negative impacts it will have and is having, negative impacts on our defense industries and on our national security, and all the negative effects that we’ve talked about so often.
You need to do this in a -- budgets are about choices and priorities and aspirations for the country. And the President believes that deficit reduction is an important goal, but it is a goal in service of a bigger goal, which is a strong economy, economic growth and job creation, strengthening the middle class. And that’s why his budget proposals have consistently contained common-sense measures to reduce our deficit that don’t cause contraction coupled with investments that he believes are necessary to help our economy grow.
I talk about this yesterday -- when we came in with that devastating financial crisis confronting the country, we had to take a dramatic measure to prevent a Great Depression from occurring, and reversing -- making untrue the headlines that predicted up to 25 percent unemployment and a global economic collapse. We took measures to deal with that. And then, once the economy began to stabilize, began to grow again, began to create jobs again, he addressed head on the need to, in a responsible way, over a sustained window, to reduce our deficit -- not in a way that would cause it to contract, but in a way that would help it grow.
Q But just lastly, you continually talk about this year. You don’t know what the effects of smarter cuts would be in terms of contraction on the economy this year -- if you did the same amount of deficit reduction the smarter way, that would cause contraction -- you don’t know the difference between that and the sequester cuts?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I think that we believe and economists believe that there are -- we can be wiser about our choices when it comes to both spending cuts and cuts in tax expenditures and increasing revenues by closing loopholes in a way that poses less of a threat of contraction and actually is helpful to economic -- to investment and economic growth and job creation.
But these are smart questions about the kind of assessments that economists need to make. And it goes -- we were talking yesterday about balanced budgets. We could, you and I, and we’re -- I mean, you may have a degree in economics, I sure don’t -- but you and I could sit down with a few pieces of paper and balance our budget. We could balance it next year. We could eliminate our defense spending. We could eliminate every deduction that the middle class gets. We could eliminate most of the federal government and get to zero on the balance sheet. And it would be catastrophic to the American people and the economy.
So getting to zero at the end of your budget document, even if you do it in a real way as opposed to a fanciful way, is not in and of itself good. It is only good if you do it in a way that’s good for the economy, good for the American people.
Donovan.
Q Thanks, Jay. I just wanted to go back -- follow up on something Ann said yesterday. When are we going to know more about how the sequester is affecting the Office of the White House? There’s 468 employees covering various functions, and you guys have said that they’re going to face pay cuts or furloughs or --
MR. CARNEY: Well, like every agency, the impact is, as the President said, not necessarily immediate, but gradual and it will build over time. But the White House Office and then broadly, the Executive Office of the President, are affected like other agencies by the sequester cuts, and that includes, as I understand, potential furloughs as well as pay reductions. But I don’t have specifics right now. And I think as they unfold, which depends on assessments made by OMB and others, we can make those available to you. But we are in no way immune, just as the Secret Service isn’t.
Q Is it safe -- at this point, no furlough notices have gone out to --
MR. CARNEY: I’ll have to check. I mean, I think there have been some -- there’s been some information that’s been communicated, but I don’t know if there’s been specific furlough notices.
Yes, sir.
Q Thank you, Jay. France and Britain have indicated their willingness to bypass the European embargo on the Syrian opposition. Has that paved a way for the President to revisit his position on this issue?
MR. CARNEY: Well, I would simply say that we are constantly reviewing our policy toward Syria, as I’ve said in the past. And we have stepped up repeatedly our humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people as well as our assistance to the Syrian opposition. And we are continually reviewing our options, and reviewing those options in light of what our goal is, which is to promote a post-Assad Syria, one that is best for the Syrian people that will, we hope, lead to greater democracy, freedom, economic development, and opportunity for the Syrian people, as well as stability in the country and in the region.
So we’re constantly assessing it. I don’t have a reaction to -- in terms of our policy to the report you’re citing. I can just say that our position has not changed in terms of providing lethal assistance, but we are reviewing our policy all the time.
Q Thanks, Jay.
MR. CARNEY: Last one, yes.
Q Just getting back to the outreach. Can you be a little bit more specific about what the President plans to do going forward? Are lunches on the Hill now a regular thing? (Laughter.) I mean, is this sort of the new --
MR. CARNEY: Again, I don’t have a specific engagement to announce today, but he will continue to have those conversations with lawmakers. The purpose here is to see -- is to encourage bipartisan cooperation, to encourage a common-sense approach to the challenges that face us on budget issues as well as the other priorities that he believes we have as a nation. And those conversations will continue.
When it comes to the fiscal challenges and the budget, he is having these conversations in order to directly present what his positions are, why it is his absolute conviction that we can only do this in a balanced way; why it is entirely appropriate and the right thing to do to reform our tax code in a way that asks the well-off and well-connected to give up some of their special treatment in the tax code in order to help pay down our deficit.
And by doing that, by choosing balance, we can protect our seniors even as we strengthen those programs that are so important to our seniors. We don’t have to voucherize Medicare and we don’t have to slash Medicaid by a third at the expense of middle-class families who have to send their elderly parents to nursing homes and need assistance to do that.
These are choices that you only have to make if you make the choice first that you’re basically -- not only are you saying to the most fortunate, the well-off and well-connected, that they don’t have to contribute, but we’re going to give you a $5 trillion tax cut that disproportionately benefits you. And if it’s really going to be revenue-neutral, there’s not an economist with any credibility who can tell you that you can have tax reform that provides a $5 trillion tax cut that’s revenue-neutral that doesn’t mean that the revenue to support the tax cut isn’t coming from the middle class to the tune of at least $2,000 per family.
So that’s the President’s belief. We’ll see if there is a willingness -- if there’s enough members of the “common sense caucus” to build a coalition that can move this forward. But that’s the only way it can move forward.
Thanks, guys.
END
1:42 P.M. EST
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On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant north of Tokyo was hit by a wall of water 43 feet high that destroyed or disabled enough equipment to cause three reactors to melt down.
Two years later, the people of Japan are bouncing back. The nuclear industry, not so much.
The United States has not (yet) built a new nuclear reactor since 1996 — new U.S. nuclear capacity has essentially flatlined. The U.S. still has far more nuclear power generation than any other country, though China, Russia, India, and Korea are actively constructing new reactors. A few U.S. building permits have trickled in since 2007, when an energy bill with incentives for new nuclear plants passed Congress. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that:
The first newly licensed nuclear-power plant to be built in the U.S. in decades, the Vogtle project in Georgia, has run into construction problems and may be falling years behind schedule, according to an engineering expert advising the state.
Nuclear power may continue to be a small wedge of our energy pie, but it is still not going to be more than a small wedge of the solution to human-caused climate change. Here’s why.
COST
A new nuclear reactor will set you back a cool $10 billion or more. The Department of Energy is promoting a plan to build as many as 50 small modular reactors per year starting in 2040. Constructed in factories, these reactors would cost “only” $3-5 billion each.
But before they even get to building a new reactor, the nuclear industry has relied upon about ten times as much in federal subsidies compared to those reluctantly offered to renewable energy developers. This is important to keep in mind as the industry complains about wind energy subsidies lowering electricity prices.
One of the arguments the nuclear industry has made over the last several decades is that though it is expensive right now, once the industry learns how to construct plants again, the financial structure changes as costs drop. This appears to be the opposite of true: Nuclear power has a negative learning curve.
Average and min/max reactor construction costs per year of completion date for US and France versus cumulative capacity completed.
Nuclear power has always been very expensive, and will continue to be staggeringly so, especially if we are to build in safety and redundancy measures needed to avoid future Fukushimas.
SAFETY
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Japan faces combined clean up and compensation costs at Fukushima estimated to reach $500 billion. The timeline for decommissioning the ruined plant is 30-40 years. There is a $6 million robot deployed to inspect the damaged hallways that got lost in the plant and has not been seen for 17 months. And the cost estimates are just guesswork:
Cleaning up the mess will mean total demolition of the four damaged reactor facilities and disposal of the nuclear waste in a yet-to-be determined site, an end-game likely to face opposition from potential host communities.
Japan has rejected the “sarcophagus” option used at Chernobyl, where the damaged reactor was encased in a massive concrete envelope. This is partly because of the difficulty of monitoring an entombed facility to ensure safety, said Kentaro Funaki, director of the industry ministry’s office in charge of decommissioning.
Estimates for total costs are mostly guesswork. “Only God knows,” said Chuo University’s Annen.
Whatever the final bill, Japanese consumers are likely to end up paying much of it, either through taxes, higher electricity rates or both, even as Japan’s government struggles with massive public debt and the costs of an ageing population.
If you ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the safety record of U.S. reactors (as the Associated Press did), they would say “the performance is quite good.” Only five out of 104 reactors had safety issues at the end of the year. However, a Union of Concerned Scientists report found that during the whole year, 40 out of the 104 had at least one serious safety incident. This map shows you the locations of 12 reactors that almost melted down in 2012.
Are U.S. reactors learning from the Fukushima accident? Not really:
Even before the new rules are completely in place, the NRC is considering a new regulation related to the Japan disaster: requiring nuclear operators to spend tens of millions of dollars to install filtered vents at two dozen reactors.
NRC staff recommended the filters as a way to prevent radioactive particles from escaping into the atmosphere after a core meltdown. The filters are required in Japan and throughout much of Europe, but U.S. utilities say they are unnecessary and expensive.
The Nuclear Energy Institute said filters may work in some situations, but not all. … “We’re not against filtering. It’s how you achieve it,” said Marvin Fertel, the group’s president and CEO. …
“It’s not the time to be rash with hasty new rules, especially when the NRC has added 40-plus ‘safety enhancements’ ” to its initial requirements following the Japan disaster, said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., senior Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Emissions
The only reason people consider nuclear as an alternative to fossil fuels is due to relatively low lifecycle emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear energy are low enough to be in the range of many other renewable forms of electricity generation. Their emissions occur not during electricity production, but through everything else required to commission and decommission a nuclear plant: “plant construction, operation, uranium mining and milling, and plant decommissioning.”
The problem is you couldn’t build the reactors fast enough to make a difference. Even prior to the disaster at the Fukushima reactor, nuclear power was never a climate cure-all as we reported back in 2007: If the world built about 2 nuclear plants each month for 50 years — along with some 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste – nuclear power would still be under one-tenth of the solution to global warming.”
Those numbers make clear nuclear power will not be a large piece of the pie in lowering emissions to stabilize below 450ppm.
Waste
The availability and security of nuclear waste storage are unresolved problems. The courts have decided that the executive branch and the states need to resolve the issue of where to put the waste, and all they appear to have concluded in three decades is “not in Nevada.”
The issue of where to put the growing national pile of nuclear waste (2,000 tons a year in spent fuel alone) is unlikely to be resolved in the next three decades. Whatever the solution ultimately is, it won’t come cheap.
What do proponents say about waste concerns? “Blah, blah, blah.”
Water
One nuclear reactor uses 35-65 million litres of water each day. Large mounts of water are also used in the uranium mining process.
Two plants in Georgia use more water than all the water used by people living in Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah combined.
* * *
Climate hawks have always had an ambivalent relationship with electricity powered by nuclear fission, primarily because, while it is low-carbon, it is so damn expensive. So although we have a hundred or so plants in the U.S. that will be with us for the foreseeable future, it is much more cost-effective to continue to promote and rely on truly clean, cost-effective renewable energy and energy efficiency.
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