Thread: Mitch McConnell defends deal, slams Obamacare tactics (blames Ted Cruz)

Politico
By MANU RAJU | 10/17/13

Ted Cruz’s push to use a shutdown to defund Obamacare was “not a smart play” and a “tactical error,” he said.

Mitch McConnell defends deal, slams Obamacare tactics


McConnell says his ability to cut a deal wasn’t hamstrung by his campaign. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

At the end of the day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he had no good option in the 16-day government shutdown fight.

House Speaker John Boehner’s strategy collapsed. Ted Cruz’s push to use a shutdown to defund Obamacare was “not a smart play” and a “tactical error,” he said. And the country was staring at the threat of a prolonged shutdown and a potentially disastrous default on a nearly $17 trillion national debt.

Using a football analogy, McConnell said he got the ball on his own two-yard-line with a “shaky” offensive line and had to cut a last-ditch deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to end the crisis, no matter how unappealing to many in his party. Despite acting as a chief deal-maker in recent years during government crises, it was unclear the role McConnell would play until the final days of the bitter fight.

“Given the card I was dealt at that point, what I had hoped to have achieved was to punt the ball to a better place on the field without raising taxes or busting the [spending] caps,” McConnell told POLITICO in a phone interview Thursday.

“We got off track with a tactical error earlier starting in July and August that diverted our attention away from what was achievable,” McConnell said bluntly of the defund Obamacare push. “And so we’ll be back at it in January and February, which is why the best you can say is, ‘It’s a punt.’”

Asked about Cruz’s contention Wednesday that had 46 Republican senators remained united they would have won the fight, McConnell said: “It’s pretty clear that 54 is more than 46 and the president of the United States thinks [Obamacare is] his greatest accomplishment.”

“It was not a smart play. It had no chance of success,” McConnell said of the defund Obamacare push.

In the interview, McConnell said his ability to cut a deal wasn’t hamstrung by his campaign; argued he would dig-in to ensure the next fiscal fight didn’t exceed the spending limits set forth in the 2011 Budget Control Act; and stated bluntly that shutting down the government won’t change Obamacare if Democrats continue to control the Senate and White House.

As a leader of the party experiencing historic lows in the polls, with tea party activists unhappy with his deal and as he faces a potentially tough Democratic opponent in a state where he’s still unpopular, the shutdown fight could still haunt McConnell next year.

But McConnell insisted any political pain for the GOP will be “short-term.” And he took a whack at his Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, saying there was “no chance” a freshman senator could craft the same kind of bargain the two leaders reached to bring an end to the shutdown and lifted the debt ceiling.

McConnell’s handling of the fiscal crisis underscores the tricky political position he constantly found himself in throughout this fight: He couldn’t be seen as undercutting the conservatives in the House, even as he opposed their strategy of using the shutdown as leverage to defund Obamacare.

Asked if the deal would hurt his chances in a primary against conservative businessman Matt Bevin, McConnell declined to comment on his primary. But he offered up a stinging analysis of his Democratic opponent, Grimes.

“What happened yesterday completely steps on the whole rationale for her candidacy, which is that somehow I’m part of what she calls the dysfunction in Washington,” McConnell said. “Look, I demonstrated on four occasions — including yesterday the most recent occasion, yesterday — that when the country is in crisis and something needs to be done on a bipartisan basis, I can step forward and get an agreement.”

Grimes, McConnell said, has had a “pretty bad 24 hours.”

Grimes has tried to make the case that McConnell is too politically motivated to lead in Washington, instead only worried about his reelection at the expense of the country, saying he “hid in the shadows.”

“Sen. McConnell is taking credit for one of the greatest embarrassments in our nation’s history,” said Grimes senior adviser Jonathan Hurst. “It is like an arsonist congratulating himself for putting out the fire he helped start.”

Grimes declined several interview requests this week on McConnell.

The final deal reached between McConnell and Reid includes virtually none of the demands that House Republicans made at the onset of the fight — and little for even Senate conservatives, 18 of whom voted against it. While it passed easily in both chambers Wednesday night, Democrats were united behind the deal, while the GOP was split.

It only makes minor changes to Obamacare. It raises the debt ceiling until Feb. 7, and allows the Treasury Department to extend that deadline if it employs “extraordinary measures.” It doesn’t make large-scale budget cuts, instead calling on a House-Senate conference committee to try to reach such an elusive deal by Dec. 13. And it doesn’t lock-in lower $967-billion spending levels in 2014 called for by the 2011 Budget Control Act, instead punting that fight until Jan. 15, the next time government funding lapses.

Some conservative groups are already accusing McConnell of surrendering, and he’s being attacked for seeking a carve-out for a Kentucky lock-and-dam project, though he vigorously defends that as a money-saving program that was sought by two other senators.

Bevin said in a video released by his campaign Thursday that McConnell has “cut and run from yet another fight. Making deals with Washington Democrats like Harry Reid to raise the debt limit without consideration for defunding or even delaying Obamacare.”

To his critics, McConnell seemed too worried about stepping into the fight until the very end, when the polls showed that his party was getting slammed for the shutdown. He didn’t offer sharp public rebukes on Cruz’s strategy until late September. He didn’t appear publicly with Boehner after a White House meeting with congressional leaders. And he didn’t talk to Reid until late in the process.

McConnell argued it was natural for him to take a backseat role to Boehner, who controls a House majority, while he controls a Senate minority. But when Boehner couldn’t pass legislation, he had to step up to cut a deal.

McConnell said it was a “false narrative” to suggest he was “hiding out.”

“The reason why I ended up having to play the prominent role that I did was the same reason I had to in December 2010 and August 2011 and December of 2012 and again yesterday was the House could not send something over,” McConnell said. “It was between the speaker and the Democrats until the House couldn’t send anything.

With McConnell’s emergence as a deal-cutter in this latest dispute, Democratic leaders, including Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have been full of praise for McConnell in the last couple days. Durbin said McConnell is the lone Republican who Democrats can count on in high-stakes talks.

“He has been a very positive force in these negotiations,” Durbin said.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/1...own-98496.html

McCain/McConnell/Graham bye, bye. time for real Conservatives too replace you.

Shutdown bill stuffed full of pork

By Associated Press October 17, 2013 6:55 am

(File Photo)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Here's a little secret about the bill Congress has approved ending the partial government shutdown and preventing a possible federal default: It's got goodies for some states and federal agencies too.There's language allowing more spending for upgrading a lock in the Ohio River between Illinois and Kentucky; money to help Colorado rebuild roads washed away by last month's catastrophic floods; extra money to help the Veterans Affairs Department whittle down a backlog of disabilities claims; and permission for the Pentagon to keep helping African nations hunt a notorious warlord.
The measure, approved Wednesday by the House and Senate, has one lump of coal for lawmakers: For the sixth consecutive year it would deny them the annual cost-of-living pay raise that by law they automatically receive unless they vote to block it. Members of Congress earn $174,000 annually, and some leaders receive more.
The 35-page bill had only a handful of such narrowly aimed provisions. That's a far cry from years ago, when spending bills would be studded with hundreds of "earmarks," or projects for specific states or congressional districts, often designed to ensure the votes of lawmakers.
One provision would let the government spend $2.9 billion - an increase from the current cap of $775 million - to upgrade the Olmstead lock on the Ohio River.
It gained attention because the two states it straddles are represented by two of the Senate's most powerful members: the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and No. 2 Democratic leader, Richard Durbin of Illinois.
Both men said they had nothing to do with the provision, and others backed that up. Aides to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the leaders of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees water projects, said they had requested the provision.
They said President Barack Obama had requested the project in his budget this year and said it has been included in House and Senate water bills this year too.
"This is not an earmark," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who with McConnell struck the compromise on the overall shutdown and debt limit bill, told reporters Wednesday.
In a boon for flood-battered Colorado, the measure would lift the usual $100 million limit on Federal Highway Administration emergency highway aid to $450 million for the state. Colorado officials have said last month's flooding destroyed 200 miles of roads and 50 bridges.
The legislation, which keeps federal agencies functioning through Jan. 15, provides an extra $294 million during that period for the Veterans Affairs Department's efforts to reduce backlogged claims, along with an additional $100 million to prevent furloughs of air traffic controllers and safety inspectors, and extra money for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to continue work on two weather satellites.
It also:
-Lets the Defense Department continue assisting African forces pursue Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group accused of atrocities.
-Provides extra money for contracts with private companies whose ships move American troops and their equipment overseas.
-Supplies $600 million for Forest Service firefighting and $36 million for Interior Department firefighting.
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http://www.gopusa.com/news/2013/10/1.../?subscriber=1

What Conservatives did get for all their troubles, however, were deep knife wounds in the back

What Mitch McConnell's Dam Deal and Frank Lautenberg's Death Benefit Tell Us About Govt Spending

Nick Gillespie|Oct. 17, 2013 11:51 am

With the government shutdown over and the debt ceiling increased yet again, business is returning to normal in Washington, D.C. (at least until the stopgap measure needs to be extended yet again).
While the whole deal does nothing to address serious fiscal issues, at least two parts of the much-lauded deal are worth pausing over, though. They define how the federal government treats taxpayer dollars.
First is the matter of a payment of $174,000 to the widow of the deceased Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). This is not special treatment, explains The Federal Times. Since before World War II, Congress has authorized a death benefit equal to a year's pay to the survivors of deceased members.
What is different in this case is that Lautenberg was loaded:

Frank Lautenberg died in June at age 89. After rising from childhood poverty to lead the Automatic Data Processing payroll management company, Lautenberg was numbered among the Senate’s wealthiest men, with a net worth of at least $57 million, according to his most recent financial disclosure report.

The payment to Mrs. Lautenberg is thus a microcosm of how today's welfare state works. In the cases of Social Security and Medicare, it takes tax money from the relatively young and the relatively poor and gives it to the relatively old and relatively rich. Except when it gives money to the objectively old and objectively rich.

Second is the matter of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's dam, which puts a lie to the idea that there were no Republican winners in the deal to end the shutdown. As Yahoo's Eric Pfeiffer writes,

The nation’s leading Republican senator came out of the deal far from empty handed. That’s because it’s been reported that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell secured language in the new government funding bill that includes nearly $3 billion for a dam project in his home state of Kentucky.
According to reports, a provision in the funding bill includes $2.918 billion in funding to the Army Corps of Engineers to install locks as part of the Olmsted Dam and Lock Authority Project on the Ohio River.

This is part of a project that is already behind schedule. It started out with a pricetag of "just" $755 million. Surely it will help McConnell's re-election gambit. To add insult to injury, here's a statement from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), whose own state will also benefit from the project:

“According to the Army Corps of Engineers, 160 million taxpayer dollars will be wasted because of canceled contracts if this language is not included. Sen. [Diane] Feinstein and I, as chairman and ranking member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, requested this provision.”

Protecting $160 million in canceled contracts by spending only $3 billion? Can the rest of us get in on that action, Lamar!
These two appropriations are worth keeping in mind as the clock starts ticking on the current CR that will keep the government open til mid-January.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/10/17/wh...-and-frank-lau