Greg Corombos of Radio America and Elaina Newport of the Capitol Steps review the most comical aspects of the first presidential debate of the 2016 campaign. They also check out the Steps’ new selections featuring George W. Bush touting his brother Jeb to be the next president and Hillary Clinton trying to keep Joe Biden out of the Democratic campaign.
Archives for August 7, 2015
‘The President Is Misspeaking, Some People Would Call It A Lie’
Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., is blasting President Obama for likening Republicans to Iranian hardliners and other alleged falsehoods, and he is also furious at his own party’s leadership for not fighting harder on this and other issues.
On Wednesday, President Obama defended the Iran deal during a speech at American University in Washington. His most controversial statement came while addressing what he called the “kneejerk partisanship” of the Republican Party.
“Just because Iranian hardliners chant ‘Death to America’ does not mean that that’s what all Iranians believe. In fact it’s those hardliners that are most comfortable with the status quo. It’s those hardliners, chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus,” said Obama.
Yoho, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee fired back at Obama’s comparison.
“Number one, it’s not presidential. I mean to throw (one of) his own political parties under the bus like that and compare us with the hardliners. . Let’s look at who the hardliners are. The hardliners in Iran, the people chanting ‘Death to America’, that would be their Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and their president, President Rouhani,” said Yoho.
The congressman says Obama is also disingenuous in insisting no stronger deal was possible and the alternative to the deal is military conflict.
“He was saying, ‘If it’s not this deal, it’s war.’ No it’s not. The alternative is a better deal and you get a better deal by putting sanctions on there harder and bringing the P5 nations back together and negotiating a better deal,” said Yoho, who says if Iran was serious about acting responsibly there would be obvious signs.
“When Iran denounces terrorism around the world, that would be a start. When Iran releases out four hostages, that would be a good faith gesture. And when Iran stops chanting ‘Death to America. Death to Israel’ and burning our flag, then I would listen to them. They’re not ready yet,” said Yoho.
Obama also denied the existence of side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, over the terms of inspecting sites suspected of nuclear activity in the future.
“Again the president is misspeaking. Some people would call it a lie. There are side deals because John Kerry even said, ‘Yes, there are deals and there are briefings on that,” said Yoho, who says one known term of a side deal completely mystifies him.
“One of the agreements is that there has to be environmental sampling. In this agreement, Iran is charged with bringing environmental samples to have the IAEA look at. How much faith do have in Iran sampling the area that’s in question? I have zero faith that they’ll do that,” said Yoho.
Several congressional Democrats have announced their support for the deal this week while a number of House Democrats said they would oppose it. The opposition got a major shot in the arm on Thursday, when Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced he would vote to reject the deal. House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Democrat Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., announced he would do the same.
Yoho expects a lot more Democrats to follow suit.
“I think you’re going to see the Democratic members of the House vote against this deal, especially ones that sit on the foreign affairs committee. The majority of them will vote against this,” he said.
If the deal were considered a treaty, it would require two-thirds support in the U.S. Senate. The Obama administration refuses to classify the agreement as a deal. In response, Congress passed the Corker-Cardin bill, requiring Congress to vote on the plan but it flips the script by forcing two-thirds of members in both the House and Senate to reject it in order to override a promised Obama veto.
Yoho understands why his party’s leaders took that route but wishes they had taken a different course by insisting that the administration classify the agreement as a treaty.
“Ideally, it would have been better to play hardball but with the lack of leadership we have in Washington both in the House and in the Senate, we’re not going to have that,” he said.
Congress is on summer recess. The Iran vote will come soon after lawmakers return in September. Other major debates will center on appropriations and the debt ceiling, more issues where Yoho thinks GOP leaders need to get much stronger.
“We have not had one discussion on the debt ceiling as a Republican conference all year long. Again, this is a lack of leadership. (House Speaker) John Boehner has not brought this up. [Appropriations Committee] Chairman Hal Rogers has asked for hearings on this. We’ve not had one,” said Yoho.
“I hope that we can get our act together in those 12 days to deal with the trillion-dollar spending that’s going to come up,” he added.
Yoho is also also unimpressed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s public vow that there would be no government shutdown.
“I’ve learned in poker you never show your cards ’til you’re ready to cash them in. Nobody wants the government to shut down, but but you want to raise a trillion dollars in debt. The American people don’t want that either,” said Yoho.
“They sent the Republicans the largest majority we’ve had in almost 90 years to lead this country. If we’re not leading, we’re going to lose the trust of the American people,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 8/7/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased that most Republican candidates performed well in a debate that easily drew the highest primary debate ratings ever, they cheer Carly Fiorina’s performance in the early debate and they quickly go through the performances of many of the candidates. They also wonder why Pataki, Gilmore and Graham are running for president and Jim suggests an intervention for a gloomy Sen. Graham. And we discuss the tough questions aimed at Donald Trump and his slamming of Fox News after the debate.
‘They’re Living in A Dream World’
The Obama administration is moving forward with a new environmental rule requiring power plants to drastically reduce carbon emissions, a policy President Obama says will improve our health and our bottom line but critics say is a massive tax hike that won’t do the planet a bit of good.
Earlier this week, President Obama unveiled a new directive from the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, that mandates a 32 percent reduction in carbon emission by 2030.
“As one of America’s governors has said, “We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it,'” said Obama. “And that’s why I committed the United States to leading the world on this challenge, because I believe there is such a thing as being too late.”
Obama also tried to head off critics concerned about the impact of this rule on energy prices by saying his administration’s studies conclude the average American will save $85 per year on energy costs once this is fully implemented.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., says this rule is just a bureaucratic reincarnation of failed legislative efforts on cap and trade through bills like McCain-Lieberman and Waxman-Markey. Inhofe says once Americans found out what was in those bills they wanted nothing to do with them. He believes the reaction will be the same to this EPA rule.
“When the people found out how expensive they are, and the cost is between $300-$400 billion, that translates to about $3,000 for every taxpaying family in America. And then they find out that even if all these things were passed, it’s not going to have the effect of reducing [carbon dioxide] worldwide,” said Inhofe, who is also author of “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”
The senator says the testimony of two other key players backs up his point, including then-Sen. Barack Obama during a discussion with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle during the 2008 campaign.
“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” said Obama in that interview. “Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal plants, natural gas, you name it. Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
Inhofe also says former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told him in a committee hearing that new emissions mandates on power plants and others wouldn’t actually make a difference in our climate.
“I asked her the question, ‘If we do all this stuff unilaterally in America, will it reduce CO2?” She said no. As a matter of fact it could increase CO2 because as we chase our manufacturing base overseas to China and other places where they have no restrictions, it would have the effect of increasing CO2,” said Inhofe.
Obama also tried to blunt conservative protests that new restrictions would hurt minority and poor communities the hardest.
“Even more cynical, we’ve got critics of this plan who are actually claiming that this will harm minority and low-income communities — even though climate change hurts those Americans the most, who are the most vulnerable,” said Obama this week.
“Today, an African-American child is more than twice as likely to be hospitalized from asthma; a Latino child is 40 percent more likely to die from asthma. So if you care about low-income, minority communities, start protecting the air that they breathe, and stop trying to rob them of their health care,” he added.
Inhofe says the chairman of the Black Chamber of Commerce told his committee a far different story.
“It’d be the most regressive of all taxes that we’ve ever passed, going after the poorest people. Think about it. The lower your income is, the higher percentage you’re going to be spending on heating your home,” said Inhofe.
The senator believes the administration is simply toeing the line with the United Nations insistence that climate change is an immediate, pressing concern.
“It all comes from the United Nations. Unfortunately, I think right now everyone is aware after having watched John Kerry as secretary of state trying to negotiate with the terrorists. It’s, again, a dismal failure. He’s one and there’s a lot of liberals like him who think there’s never been a [bad] idea that has come from a multinational organization, primarily the United Nations,” said Inhofe.
While the UN and America’s own government are insisting on much more stringent emissions in the United States, Inhofe says the world’s worst violators are just waiting to gobble up our companies and jobs.
“Right now, China is looking at us, just hoping that we’ll pass something here because that would chase our manufacturing base over there. That’s exactly what they would want,” said Inhofe.
Beyond the economic impact is the simple fact technology does not exist to bring many power plants into compliance with the rule. Obama says we need to have faith in American ingenuity, just as we did in drastically raising fuel efficiency standards in the auto industry. Inhofe says the country simply can’t operate on the energy Obama wants to use.
“You can’t make that kind of reductions when you stop and realize that all the renewables put together right now only constitute five percent of the total energy it takes to run America,” he said.
But Inhofe is not without hope. In the near term, Senate Republicans are pushing back with the ARENA Act, a plan sponsored by Senator Shelley Moore Capito of coal-rich West Virginia.
“What it does is pretty much negate everything that [Obama] is trying to do,” said Inhofe. “It would rescind the rules. It would require emission limits that coal plants can actually achieve, in other words they are possible. It would allow states to opt out of any plan that is found to have a negative impact on their economy on their growth or on their energy reliability.”
Knowing full well that Obama will have his veto pen ready for any such legislation, Inhofe says an aggressive education campaign is needed to rally public support against this policy, just as it rallied against the earlier legislative efforts.
“Once their constituency learns that, number one, it’s not possible to do what they want and, number two, even if we did this would not have any effect on the overall emissions of CO2, then people are not going to be wanting to spend a tax of approximately $3,000 a family for something that doesn’t accomplish anything,” said Inhofe.