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In the face of Republican calls for Democrats to offer a plan of their own for funding the federal government, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled a $1.1 trillion bill which imposes $6.5 billion in new spending cuts -- and then promptly declared both it and the rival House GOP proposal dead on arrival.
"Not to spoil the surprise, but we all know how it will turn out. We know neither will reach the president's desk as read," Reid predicted Friday, as he set the Senate up for a Tuesday vote on the House-passed bill to fund the government for the remaining seven months of the federal fiscal year.
"We'll end up back at square one without consensus, without a budget for the rest of this fiscal year, and without assurances that we can keep the country running," Reid said. "So, once these votes are behind us, and everyone's voice is heard, I hope each senator and member of Congress will find renewed motivation to do what we needed to do since the beginning, come together, negotiate in good faith."
As he also sought a vote on the new Democratic alternative, Reid repeatedly called the House GOP legislation "mean-spirited" and "political," describing the legislative process there as "a mad rush to see who could do the most sensational amendment." The GOP proposal, which passed the House, would have cut $61 billion from 2010 spending levels, while the Democrats' plan calls for $6.5 billion in new cuts, in addition to a $4 billion reduction agreed to in a bipartisan stopgap bill signed Wednesday by the president.
Republican leaders matched Reid's dismissive rhetoric with disdain of their own.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the $6.5 billion in cuts in Reid's 352-page bill, first announced Thursday with Vice President Biden's visit to Capitol Hill for negotiations, "little more than one more proposal to maintain the status quo -- to give the appearance of action where there is none. This latest proposal is unacceptable, and it's indefensible."
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, clearly on message with McConnell, said, "The White House and congressional Democrats finally announced their position. Unfortunately, it is little more than the status quo, and the status quo is indefensible and unacceptable."
The Democratic funding bill includes tens of billions of dollars more than the Republican plan in funding for customs and border security, weapons of mass destruction training, nuclear nonproliferation, the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and overseas diplomatic operations, among many other areas. Interestingly, the Army Corps of Engineers, always a highly popular program back home for members, receives more than the president requested.
Calling them "responsible cuts," Democrats rescinded money from "surplus firefighting funds," some federal building construction, unallocated funds from a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration seat belt grant program, and unused funds remaining in the national "Cash for Clunkers" program, and made cuts to funding for some expanded transit service.
Democrats continued to tout $51 billion in cuts. However, that merely claims savings from a budget that was never implemented. Democrats did not approve a budget last year when they controlled both house of Congress and instead opted to keep spending at 2010 levels. Reid and White House budget officials are now trying to count money sought by President Obama but never approved as savings. Republicans attempted this, as well, by trying to count their $61 billion in real-time cuts as meeting their campaign promise to cut $100 billion from the budget.
McConnell blasted the Democrats' math, saying, "They say that this proposal meets us 'halfway.' "I won't get into their tortured justification."
Lawmakers have until March 18, when the current two-week, stopgap spending plan expires, to find some middle ground between $6.5 billion and $61 billion.
Related Links Boehner Launches Effort to Defend Gay Marriage Ban Print Email Share Comments Recommend View ArticleLeave a CommentSort: NewestSort: Oldest Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. You must login to comment. View ArticleView All Comments Latest Politics Videos March 04, 2011Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:06:14 GMT6:03 PM EST
If President Obama will no longer defend the federal law against gay marriage, Republicans controlling the U.S. House say they will.
House Speaker John Boehner said Friday he is convening a bipartisan legal advisory group to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Boehner's announcement comes a week after the Obama Justice Department said it would no longer defend the law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, a reversal for the Obama administration, which had defended it despite the president's misgivings with the policy. The nation's lawyers as recently as last month had filed a court motion in support of the law.
Attorney General Eric Holder has said that the Justice Department would continue to enforce the law but no longer would defend its constitutionality in court challenges.
"It is regrettable that the Obama administration has opened this divisive issue at a time when Americans want their leaders to focus on jobs and the challenges facing our economy," Boehner said in a statement. "The constitutionality of this law should be determined by the courts
A peculiar thing was happening in Iowa. The handicapped parking spaces always seemed to be full.
So state Republican Rep. Dave Tjepkes, teaming up with another lawmaker, set about to figure out why. What they found stunned them.
Nearly a half-million parking permits were in circulation in Iowa, covering about 270,000 people. That's close to 10 percent of Iowa's population.
"The numbers kind of speak for themselves," Tjepkes said.
Claiming some Iowans are clearly abusing the system, Tjepkes and Democratic Rep. Jim Lykam have proposed a new bill to bring some order to the handicapped permit free-for-all. As it turns out, Iowa doesn't have much of a system for checking up on people who've been issued a permit.
So if a permit holder no longer needs it, or dies, that pass can stay in circulation forever.
The statewide statistics, released last month, effectively confirmed for Tjepkes stories about how people were holding on to parking permits long after the loved ones who used them died.
"The joke we have is they pass them down to the future generations," he said.
But for lawmakers and disability advocates, it's no laughing matter. Those who have heart conditions or respiratory problems, or who are confined to a wheelchair, need those parking spots.
Tjepkes' and Lykam's proposal, which recently passed out of committee in the House, would make all new handicapped permits valid for five years. At that point, they would have to be renewed.
The solution, though, doesn't solve the problem of the more than 460,000 permits floating around Iowa, not all of which are legitimate.
Iowa officials were worried it would cost too much money to require everyone to renew their permits. Just mailing out the notifications could cost the state more than $100,000, one lobbyist told a local newspaper.
Sylvia Piper, executive director of Disability Rights Iowa, expressed concern that the new proposal would "grandfather" in the old permits. She said she still thinks those permits should be "managed" better.
"We have serious violations of those spots for people who truly need to have those parking spaces available to them," she said.
Piper said she routinely monitors handicapped parking spots, confronting delivery truck drivers and people without permits who park in them. She said she hopes the legislative proposal makes a difference.
"It could be your mother. It could be your grandfather who is eventually going to need this," she said.
Tjepkes acknowledged the state can't claw back the questionable permits that may be out there. But by raising awareness about the problem, he hopes to guilt-trip any cheaters.
"Hopefully, their conscience will bother them to a degree that they will refrain from doing that," he said.
Print Email Share Comments Recommend View ArticleLeave a CommentSort: NewestSort: Oldest Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. You must login to comment. View ArticleView All Comments Latest Politics Videos March 04, 2011Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:06:14 GMT6:03 PM EST
WASHINGTON - Emboldened by Wednesday's Supreme Court decision, Westboro Baptist Church attorney Margie Phelps said she will challenge statutes all over the country that restrict picketing at funerals.
The court decided 8-1, with Justice Samuel Alito dissenting, that the First Amendment protected Westboro and the Phelps family from the lawsuit brought by Albert Snyder. The Phelpses picketed the 2006 Westminster, Md., funeral of Snyder's son, causing him emotional distress.
Phelps said it was ironic that the case that allowed her to argue in front of the nation's highest court came out of Maryland.
"The one law that might be good, of all these laws across the land -- wait for it -- is Maryland," she said. "I'm not totally throwing in the towel, and it was wrongly conceived, but it's (only) 100 feet. So if there is one that's got a fighting chance of staying good, that would be the one."
Maryland's picketing law requires protesters to remain at least 100 feet away from any funeral or funeral procession.
Phelps said she already has challenges pending against Nebraska and Missouri laws that are more restrictive.
Snyder's son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, died at age 20 in a Humvee accident in Iraq. Westboro founder Fred Phelps and five of his followers used his funeral as an opportunity to spread their anti-gay message with signs like "God Hates America" and "Fags Doom Nations."
Matthew Snyder was not gay, but Westboro has picketed hundreds of military funerals across the nation, claiming that soldiers' deaths are God's vengeance for the country's tolerance of homosexuality.
In response, 43 states and the federal government have enacted laws that restrict picketing at funerals -- laws that Margie Phelps said are largely unconstitutional based on three legal principles she sees in the Supreme Court's decision: Funeral attendees are not a "captive audience," the Phelps' protests amount to "public issue speech," and speech does not disrupt a funeral service.
"When all these laws get passed they pretend like there's some basis under the captive audience doctrine to put us 500, 1,000, 1,500 feet away," Phelps said. "That's totally debunked in that (Supreme Court) opinion."
Washington, D.C., lawyer Gene Schaerr disagreed.
Schaerr wrote an amicus brief in support of Snyder for the American Legion. He said the Supreme Court "went out of its way" to tell lower courts that the decision did not mean they should stop enforcing anti-picketing statutes, pointing to a passage from Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion that reads, "To the extent these laws are content-neutral, they raise very different questions from the tort verdict at issue in this case. Maryland's law, however, was not in effect at the time of the events at issue here, so we have no occasion to consider how it might apply to facts such as those before us, or whether it or other similar regulations are constitutional.
Schaerr said the court has long upheld reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech.
"I think they're going to have a very difficult time getting them overturned," Schaerr said of the Phelpses. "What they had going for them here, obviously, was a jury verdict that directly targeted their speech and would have punished them for their speech. But when you're dealing with a time, place and manner restriction, that's a completely different animal. Those statutes don't target any one person."
"He lost; I won," Margie Phelps said when told of Schaerr's interpretation of the decision.
She also questioned his credentials on First Amendment issues.
"He doesn't labor in this vineyard, by the way, he labors in the vineyard of worshipping dead soldiers," she said. "He doesn't labor in the vineyard of keeping a dissenting voice alive on your mean streets. He doesn't have a clue what those issues are. Not a clue."
Schaerr has served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justices Warren Burger and Antonin Scalia and associate counsel to President George H.W. Bush. He works for the international firm of Winston and Strawn, where he is the chairman of the firm's nationwide appellate, critical motions and litigation constitutionality practice.
Raquel Guillory, spokeswoman for the Maryland's attorney general's office, said Wednesday that the court's decision did not affect the state's anti-picketing law and that it would continue to be enforced.
Capital News Service contributed to this report.
Print Email Share Comments Recommend View ArticleLeave a CommentSort: NewestSort: Oldest Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. You must login to comment. View ArticleView All Comments Latest Politics Videos March 04, 2011Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:06:14 GMT6:03 PM EST
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