Tag: Congress
Stevenson’s army, February 15: earmarks edition
– NYT reports that the Taliban have encircled several Afghan cities.
– FT columnist says Bitcoin rise means reduced role and influence of the dollar.
– Military authors describe legal efforts to limit civilian casualties.
– Punchbowl explains return of earmarks:
Democrats are bringing earmarks back. And they’re trying to clean them up.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the new chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations panels, will announce in the coming weeks that Democrats will reinstate earmarks — also known as “member-directed spending” — in next fiscal year’s spending bills.
Democrats say they will be transparent and disclose the details of each earmark — who requested it, and which entity would get the money. Members cannot request earmarks for entities to which they have financial ties. And Congress will not allow earmarks for for-profit institutions, such as private companies. Earmarks will be limited to state and local governments and nonprofits that carry out quasi-government functions. There will be limits on how much of each spending bill can be allocated toward earmarks.
Some lawmakers, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), have been arguing for years that Congress should bring back earmarks. The idea is to give members of Congress a personal stake in spending bills.
Hoyer and other pro-earmark lawmakers also argue that no one knows the needs of a state or congressional district better than the people who represent them in Congress.
DeLauro, who publicly supported reinstating earmarks in her campaign for the Appropriations gavel, is expected to make a formal announcement as soon as next week, when Congress returns from the Presidents’ Day recess.
“Chair DeLauro has been clear that she supports Member-directed funding for community projects,” said Evan Hollander, communications director for the House Appropriations Committee, in a statement. “She is working through the details of a reformed process, and will share additional information with Members and the public in the coming weeks.”
“Chairman Leahy has been clear about his intent to restore congressionally directed spending in a transparent and accountable way as part Congress’ constitutional power of the purse,” said Jay Tilton, press secretary for the Senate Appropriations panel.
How will this impact D.C.? This is a big deal for a lot of reasons. This will rejuvenate a whole line of business for lobbying shops. Appropriations lobbying was once a very lucrative corner of the influence market — that will come back now.
Here’s a question worth pondering: will House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy allow his lawmakers to take earmarks, or will he use this as an opportunity to try to set Republicans apart? Rule 30 of the House GOP rules ban Republicans requesting earmarks. But there are many Republicans who will want to change that given the shifting politics.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, February 12 and 13
I didn’t get to it yesterday, so here is two days worth:
February 13
– Major shakeup in Senate Appropriations — Sen. Leahy becomes chairman, but loses his chairmanship of State/Foreign Ops after many decades. Full roster here.
– State de-lists Houthis as terrorists.
– Biden keeps tariffs on European wine & cheese [Darn]
February 12
This is the year of the ox.
Technology issues are a major part of the Biden administration’s China policy. Note these:
Export restrictions expected.
Supply chain issues important.
Press reports say Jennifer Harris, co-author of War by other means [assigned for week 6] will be NSC director for foreign economic policy.
Fred Kaplan says Pence’s “nuclear football” was evacuated with him.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, February 5
The WH website now has the presidential order setting up the Biden administration’s NSC system. Notable is the number of people now regularly allowed to attend,including “as appropriate” people from mostly domestic agencies and the Special Envoy for Climate [John Kerry]. The new administration will call its national security documents “National Security Memorandum” and its assistant secretary working groups “Interagency Policy Committees” [IPC]
NSA Jake Sullivan answered questions at a WH briefing before the president’s speech.
The WH promised additional NSMs on other issues, including the national security workforce sent around earlier.
Charlie put this out earlier:
The NSC system is busy although the organizing order has yet tp be released. Axios reports that a Principals Committee [cabinet level but without the president] will hold a meeting today on Iran policy. They’ll consider a paper from Thursday’s meeting of the Deputies Committee. [I wonder who attended, since most departments still lack confirmed deputies.]
President Biden gave his first major foreign policy address at the State Department. It was basically “I’m not Trump,” reversing many positions of the previous administration. He also issued a formal order to review personnel policies for the “national security workforce.” That could hopefully lead to revised rules for recruitment, training, and promotion of careerists.
Biden also gave a morale-boosting talk to State employees, but got pushback in the NYT from people who complain the administration is hiring too many political appointees for jobs often filled by careerists in the past.
FP sees the big speech, not surprisingly, as reflecting Jake Sullivan them of a populist “foreign policy for the middle class.”
The Senate this morning approved the budget resolution that opens the way for a filibuster-avoiding reconciliation bill for Covid relief. There were 15 hours of votes that were symbolic since the measure never goes to the president or becomes law. House has to pass the measure again because of minor amendments.
FYI, there’s an S-400 problem with India.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, February 4
– President Biden makes major foreign pol;icy speech this afternoon during visit to State Dept.
-Politico reports how he spends his days.
– WSJ notes that his China advisers are a “team of rivals.”
– The Axios weekly China report summarizes the many proposed approaches to China.
Last year Congress created an Afghanistan Study Group, probably with the intent or expectation that outside experts would question the Trump policy of rapid withdrawal. That’s how it worked out. The full report is here.
And the troop withdrawals from Germany are now on hold.
The Senate has approved a power-sharing arrangement much like what was done in 2001. Democrats now control the committee agendas. Here’s the new list of Democratic members.
New resource on congressional redistricting.
CNAS has a bunch of reports on Iran.
National Security Archive has compiled declassified report on Rumsfeld’s notorious snowflakes.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 19
Several hearings today for national security nominees. Three former SecDefs and several other former DOD officials support Austin.
Defense News notes Mattis’ failure to understand civilian politics.
Two reports about extremists in the US military — from NYT and Military.com.
AP details the collapse of police command structure at the Capitol.
WOTR has good think piece about military traditionalists and futurists.
Trump’s “1776 Commission” reports that progressivism is like fascism. Thought you’d like to know.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 18, late edition
I’ve now found data reinforcing my longstanding belief that Newt Gingrich, more than any other person, is responsible for the rise of toxic partisanship. [There are other factors, of course, but Gingrich was at the leading edge.]
Princeton Prof Julian Zelizer ably described how Gingrich used the theme of corruption to destroy public trust in Congress and vault the GOP into control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. The Georgia congressman openly said, “We have to destroy the House in order to save it.” He certainly achieved the destruction, but we have never seen the salvation.
Last week Kevin Drum posted a chart based on Pew surveys showing the decline in trust of government among Republicans and Democrats. [I can’t seem to be able to copy and paste the chart, so please look.] It shows a sharp drop in the early 1990s, in both parties, offset by a post-9/11 resurgence of trust, followed by the declines linked to the forever wars and the Democratic distrust of Bush and then GOP distrust of Obama.
It didn’t have to be this way. Politics cold have been about policy rather than personality. But Gingrich and his acolytes weaponized peccadilloes [the House bank, postage allowances] and found that it worked politically. How ironic that Donald Trump convinced his supporters that he had “drained the swamp” when he appointed lobbyists in charge of agencies they had lobbied for private clients.
Gingrich is also responsible for hyperpartisanship in another way: many of his Young Turks later became Senators, bringing their House majoritarianism and take-no-prisoners style into the upper chamber.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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