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May 18, 2006
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JUNE:
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MAY:
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MARCH:
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FEBRUARY:
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JANUARY:
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DECEMBER:
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Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press!  Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

The Morning Murmur – Thursday, May 18, 2006

1.  U.S. Budget Deficit Will Be Halved Ahead of Schedule, Snow Says - Bloomberg
Surging tax revenue will help President George W. Bush meet his deficit-reduction pledge ahead of schedule, Treasury Secretary John Snow said. Tax revenue has surged along with growth in the economy.

2. For Love of Money - Human Events
The media view tax cuts as a "cost" to the government. This subtlety promotes the idea that the government owns your money already, and if they allow you to keep what you've earned, they are cutting you a break. And as long as the media continue to elevate wealth-bashing above facts, the quality of journalism will suffer.

3. 'GOP gloom - Washington Times Op-ed
It seems some conservatives journalist have a case of selective amnesia, overcome by the anti-Republican aroma in a Washington atmosphere with a nose that only smells bad news. How soon they forget the successes of the Republican majority.

4. The Speaker's Wrath - Chicago Sun-Times
Speaker Hastert engaged in a high decibel rant last week when he met with Vice President Cheney. The Speaker was enraged by the sacking of his friend and former colleague, Porter Goss. With pessimism rising over a contemplated loss of their majority in the 2006 elections, Republican lawmakers blame their condition on Bush's performance.

5. U.S. Said to Weigh a New Approach on North Korea - New York Times
President Bush's top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country's nuclear program are still under way.

For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:

1.  U.S. Budget Deficit Will Be Halved Ahead of Schedule, Snow Says - Bloomberg

May 16 -- Surging tax revenue will help President George W. Bush meet his deficit-reduction pledge ahead of schedule, Treasury Secretary John Snow said.

``The president's target of cutting the deficit in half is going to be exceeded and it's going to be done ahead of schedule,'' Snow said. ``We're coming up on that target now.''

Bush promised to the cut the deficit in half to about 2 percent of gross domestic product before he leaves office in 2009. Higher-than-expected tax inflows mean the administration will reach that goal by the end of fiscal 2007 or even sooner, Snow said in a news conference in Washington today.

The White House originally said the deficit would reach a record $423 billion in the year that ends in September. The Congressional Budget Office on May 4 said the deficit for this year could be as low as $300 billion.

The deficit in fiscal 2005 shrank for the first time in Bush's presidency, narrowing to $319 billion, or 2.6 percent of gross domestic product. In February, the White House said costs for hurricane relief and maintaining forces in Iraq and Afghanistan would inflate the deficit to 3.2 percent of the economy in the year ending Sept. 30.

The gap for the first seven months of the fiscal year totaled $184.1 billion, compared with $236.9 billion a year earlier, the Treasury said last week.

Bush tomorrow will sign a $69 billion measure to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains until 2010, a proposal that has been the centerpiece of his economic policy this year. The measure also limits the reach of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel system meant to ensure wealthy people pay some tax even if they have large deductions.

Tax revenue has surged along with growth in the economy. Gross domestic product expanded in the first quarter at an annual pace of 4.8 percent, the fastest in more than two years, led by consumer spending and the biggest jump in business investment since 2000.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=adRN14vmCkVg&refer=news_index#
 

2. For Love of Money - Human Events

by Amy Menefee
Posted May 18, 2006

Money is the root of all evil.

That seems to be the media's Sunday school lesson to audiences lately. First, they demonized oil companies for making too much. Then they went after individual CEOs. Most recently, they've once again turned on that group that forever threatens the well-being of America: The Rich.

Yes, according to the press, Congress has again bowed to the wishes of The Rich. It has cut them a huge tax break while the rest of America suffers and the national debt soars from the "cost" of letting people keep more of their own money. But the media, the Guardians of the Poor, are here to expose it all. The multimillion-dollar anchors, like NBC's Brian Williams and soon-to-be CBS's Katie Couric, are on the case! They are not at all aligned with the interests of The Rich.

The tax cut "clearly favors the wealthy," said ABC's Betsy Stark. "Critics" (which often means journalists) call it "a gift to the wealthy," said CBS's Harry Smith. As usual, to put these comments in perspective, it's necessary to examine two bodies of information: what the media are telling us, and what they're not telling us.

They are telling us the newly-passed $70 billion tax relief bill benefits The Rich. Obviously, a tax cut benefits only those who are paying taxes. As the Tax Foundation has pointed out, 32 percent of those who filed federal tax returns this year actually had no tax liability. Those people aren't going to benefit from most tax cuts ... because that's hard to do when you're not paying taxes to begin with.

They're also telling us tax cuts are bad for our debt. CBS's Bob Schieffer said on May 10 that "critics ... remind us that any tax cut is just going to drive the national debt higher."

There are two problems with that reasoning. One is the media view tax cuts as a "cost" to the government. This subtlety promotes the idea that the government owns your money already, and if they allow you to keep what you've earned, they are cutting you a break. By keeping it, you are draining the Treasury.

The other problem with the debt argument is that cutting taxes on capital gains and dividends increases the incentive to invest. That leads to more investment. More investment leads to more income. And more income means more tax payments. Funny how that works.

As The Wall Street Journal noted on May 14, "The tax payments of the wealthiest 3% of Americans increased at twice the rate of the tax payments by everyone else from 2001-2004. And those richest 3% now pay nearly as much income taxes as the other 97% combined." If politicians didn't spend every penny that comes into Washington, perhaps we could start paying down the debt with our higher tax revenues.

But the media tell us the debt is the tax cuts' fault. Meanwhile, what aren't they telling us?

For starters, they're keeping mum about the ridiculous economic growth since the tax cuts were enacted in 2003. America has added more than 5 million jobs, and the unemployment rate has fallen from 6.3 percent to 4.7 percent. It's as if they don't view that as a fact, but as merely a claim on one side of a debate. NBC's Brian Williams said on May 10, "Republicans say the tax cuts are helping the economy, but Democrats argue most of the benefits go to the wealthiest Americans." It's difficult for viewers to get the facts about the U.S. economy from reports like that.

Broadcasters also haven't been mentioning how upset they were over the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) just a few months ago. A large part of the recent tax bill - $31 billion out of $70 billion - will go to AMT relief for 15 million middle-class families, which has had support from both parties and the media.

Take CBS's Julie Chen for example. On the February 23 "Early Show," she was gasping at the impact of the AMT on the middle class. "Oh, my goodness," Chen said, adding that "it really sounds like they need to change the tax laws." But when Congress did just that, she said it was a Republican plan and that "Democrats complain the bill favors the rich."

The media's suspicion of The Rich is a driving force behind much reporting. But even the Bible doesn't say money is the root of all evil. It says "the love of money." That means elevating money above more important things. And as long as the media continue to elevate wealth-bashing above facts, the quality of journalism will suffer.

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14949

3. GOP gloom - Washington Times Op-ed

By Gary J. Andres
Published May 18, 2006

Conservative columnists have a case of congressional crankiness. Take Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal, for example. She wrote last week that Republicans on the Hill are so far off track it might take losing in November to unlearn the lessons of power. Media critic Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post found her mood so foreboding he suggested only Prozac might lift conservatives' gathering gloom. Frustration among conservatives is both palpable and understandable. Many believe -- accurately, I might add -- their pens played a role in promoting the emergence of the Republican majority in Congress.

But frustration is also a communicable disease, and selective memory loss is one of its symptoms. Conservatives may need a dose of remembrance and a lesson in the limits of power the majority party faces in the modern Congress. The same pens that helped inaugurate a Republican majority could hand congressional gavels to liberal lawmakers by creating a pandemic of low turnout among conservatives.

How soon we forget. When President Bush took office, the economy was teetering on the brink of recession. The Republican Congress passed legislation to cut taxes every year since Mr. Bush took office -- including the latest signed into law yesterday, extending capital gains and dividends tax cuts for two more years. These fiscal policies championed by conservatives keep our economy surging forward, representing tangible evidence that supplyside economics works. Don't bet that New York Democrat Charlie Rangel as Ways and Means Committee chair would continue this pattern.

Conservatives also promote legal reforms. In the last couple of years, the Republican Congress passed and the president signed comprehensive class-action reform, gun manufacturers' liability reform and bankruptcy reform -- all over the vigorous objections of the left and their friends in the trial bar. Michigan Democrat John Conyers certainly would not follow this path as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The Republican majority in Congress has been a bulwark defending the culture of life. The 108th Congress passed and the president signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and a partial birth abortion ban. California Democrat Nancy Pelosi would not even schedule these items for a vote if she were House speaker.

Republicans in the Senate defeated the left by confirming two outstanding conservative jurists to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito will put a conservative imprint on the court possibly for decades.

The list could go on. It just seems some conservatives have a case of selective amnesia, overcome by the anti-Republican aroma in a Washington atmosphere with a nose that only smells bad news.

Have there been some missteps? You bet. But Republican lawmakers, like the rest of us, are fallible. We elect politicians, not popes.

Frustrated conservatives should aim their fury at the real culprit -- the 45 Democratic senators who have the means and motive to block most conservative initiatives. Consider what the House, where "majority" really means 50 percent plus one, has passed in the last several years: permanent tax cuts, death tax elimination, medical malpractice reform, creating opportunity zones in urban areas, welfare reform, child interstate abortion notification and Head Start reform, to name a few. The House could have also adopted some version of Social Security reform with personal accounts and tax simplification had Senate prospects not been so bleak.

While Washington shorthand says Republicans hold the majority in the Senate, the phrase is a misnomer in the modern Congress. The day after the 2004 election, I wrote in the Weekly Standard that conservatives should temper their expectations despite a four-seat gain by Republicans: "A combination of new Democratic tactics and old Senate rules still leaves the minority the power to frustrate the Republicans' legislative agenda," I quoted former Senate parliamentarian Bob Dove, "This is now a 60-vote chamber," and a determined minority with 41 votes could block almost everything -- and they usually do. Given these institutional rules and heightened partisanship, it's surprising Republicans have enacted any conservative policies in the past five years.

Instead of wallowing in frustration, conservatives need a new mantra: There's more work to do. They should begin by painting a more realistic picture of the meaning of "controlling" the Senate for conservative voters and then promote the creation of a real majority by trying to elect five to seven more Republican senators.

Prozac cannot lift the collective spirits of conservatives, but neither will "Speaker" Pelosi.

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060517-082712-1381r.htm

4. The Speaker's Wrath - Chicago Sun-Times

By Robert Novak

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a 64-year-old ex-high school wrestling coach, ordinarily is not a shouter. But according to Capitol Hill sources, he engaged in a high decibel rant last week when he met with Vice President Dick Cheney. The speaker was enraged by the sacking of his friend and former colleague, Porter Goss.

Hastert was so vituperative that a private session with President George W. Bush in the living quarters of the White House was scheduled immediately (although Hastert aides said the meeting had been planned previously). The speaker toned down his volume on the hallowed ground and did more listening than talking. But the president did not slake Hastert's wrath over the abrupt sacking of Goss as CIA director.

That wrath reflects the feeling in the House Republican cloakroom that Goss, who gave up a safe congressional seat from Florida for a thankless cleanup mission at the CIA, is being made a scapegoat for the government's intelligence mess. But Hastert's discontent goes beyond the CIA. The GOP mood on Capitol Hill, particularly the House, is poisonous. With pessimism rising over a contemplated loss of their majority in the 2006 elections, Republican lawmakers blame their parlous condition on Bush's performance.

Cheney was on the Hill last week to receive the Distinguished Service Award, along with three other former House members: Lindy Boggs, Father Robert Drinan and Goss. To Hastert and his Republican colleagues, this was inadequate compensation for Goss' shabby treatment.

Hastert had urged Goss to postpone his retirement and seek another term in Congress, and Bush then talked Goss into taking on the arduous mission of bringing the CIA under presidential control. Two days before Goss was shown the door, Hastert met with John Negroponte. The director of national intelligence gave the speaker no hint that Hastert's friend at the CIA was being fired.

Hastert, who served with Cheney in the House for two years (1987-88), let the vice president have it in their private meeting. He said he trusted his close friend Goss, who had performed well at the nasty job of cleaning out an agency filled with critics of the president and his policies. The speaker made clear he considered the crude treatment of Goss a personal insult.

Cheney took this so seriously that he quickly scheduled a White House meeting of Bush and Hastert (that did not appear on public schedules of either the president or the speaker). With the vice president sitting in, Bush expressed his high regard for Goss. Hastert had criticized the choice of Gen. Michael Hayden as Goss' successor, and Bush urged the speaker to support the nominee.

It was not merely that Hastert and other House Republicans objected to the sacking of Goss. They resented the demeaning way it was performed. In particular, it could be inferred there was some scandalous reason for Goss' departure. It has been incorrectly tied to published reports of Dusty Foggo, Goss' handpicked No. 3 CIA official, being under investigation in the Duke Cunningham bribery and corruption scandal.

Critics of Goss claim that, as a legislator, he was a poor administrator (the complaint that habitually follows a high-profile sacking in government). But they do not appreciate the anger Bush generated among Goss' friends in Congress. One senior House Republican, asking that his name not be used, told me: "Porter was unceremoniously kicked in the butt. He was treated with contempt."

Correctly or not, the treatment of Goss has caused speculation in Congress that Bush is making a peace offering to his critics at Langley. A president waging a global war against terror can hardly function with an intelligence agency whose employees make off-the-record speeches against his policies, contribute to his political opponents and leak secrets to the news media. Was getting rid of Goss the equivalent of a white flag of surrender?

Such interpretations suggest that there is basically non-communication between Bush and fellow Republicans in Congress. The president had to summon the speaker of the House to calm him down because he had given him no heads-up earlier. More than difficulties at the CIA need to be resolved as the GOP lurches toward the dreaded mid-term elections.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/05/the_speakers_wrath.html
 

5. U.S. Said to Weigh a New Approach on North Korea - New York Times

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, May 17 - President Bush's top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country's nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.

Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.

North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.

For several years after he first took office, Mr. Bush vowed not to end North Korea's economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantlement took place. Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.

The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran's nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration's discussions about what to do next said, "There is a sense that they can't leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become - a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure."

But it is far from clear that North Korea would engage in any new discussions, especially if they included talk of political change, human rights, terrorism and an opening of the country, topics that the Bush administration has insisted would have to be part of any comprehensive discussions with North Korea.

With the war in Iraq and the nuclear dispute with Iran as distractions, many top officials have all but given up hope that North Korea's government will either disarm or collapse during Mr. Bush's remaining time in office. Increasingly, they blame two of Mr. Bush's negotiating partners, South Korea and China, which have poured aid into North Korea even while the United States has tried to cut off its major sources of revenue.

In his first term, Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he would never "tolerate" a nuclear North Korea. Now he rarely discusses the country's suspected weapons. Instead, he has met in the Oval Office with escapees from the country and used the events to discuss North Korea's prison camps and the suffering of its people.

Mr. Bush has also been under subtle pressure to change the first-term talk of speeding change of government. "Focusing on regime change as the road to denuclearization confuses the issue," former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger wrote in a lengthy op-ed article that appeared in The Washington Post on Tuesday. Noting that the negotiations have been conducted by Christopher R. Hill, a seasoned diplomat who played a major role in the Dayton peace accords, which halted the civil war in Bosnia, he said, "Periodic engagement at a higher level is needed."

A classified National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea, which was circulated among senior officials earlier this year, concluded that the North had probably fabricated the fuel for more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of Mr. Bush's administration and was continuing to produce roughly a bomb's worth of new plutonium each year. But in a show of caution after the discovery of intelligence flaws in Iraq, the assessment left unclear whether North Korea had actually turned that fuel into weapons.

With the six-nation negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program appearing to go nowhere, the drive for a broader strategy was propelled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and one of her top aides, Philip D. Zelikow, who drafted two papers describing the new approach.

Those papers touched off what one senior official called "a blizzard of debate" over the next steps that eventually included Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been widely described by current and former officials as leading the drive in Mr. Bush's first term to make sure the North Korean government received no concessions from the United States until all of its weapons and weapons sites were taken apart. It is unclear where Mr. Cheney stands on the new approach that emerged from the State Department.

Now, said one official who has participated in the recent internal debate, "I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult."

The official added, "So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war" that has existed, at least on paper, for 53 years. "It may be another way to get there."

An agreement that was signed in September by North Korea and the five other nations involved in the talks - the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia - commits the country to give up its weapons and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "at an early date" but leaves completely unclear what would have to come first: disarmament or a series of steps that would aid North Korea.

It also included a sentence that paves the way for the initiative recommended to Mr. Bush, declaring that "the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum." But it does not specify what steps North Korea would have to take first.

As described by administration officials, none of whom would speak on the record about deliberations inside the White House, Mr. Bush's aides envision starting negotiations over a formal peace treaty that would include the original signatories of the armistice - China, North Korea and the United States, which signed on behalf of the United Nations. They would also add South Korea, now the world's 11th-largest economy, which declined to sign the original armistice.

Japan, Korea's colonial ruler in the first half of the 20th century, would be excluded, as would Russia.

A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment on any internal deliberations on North Korea policy and referred all questions to the State Department, which has handled the negotiations with the North. The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, declined to discuss the recommendations made to Mr. Bush and said, "The most important decision is with North Korea - and that is the strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program."

"They signed a joint statement," he added, "but they have yet to demonstrate that they have made a decision to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs."

In justifying its refusal to return to talks, North Korea has complained bitterly about the financial sanctions imposed by the United States, which have been aimed at closing down the North's banking activities in Macao and elsewhere in Asia. The United States has described those steps as "defensive measures" intended to stop the country from counterfeiting American currency and exporting drugs and missiles.

Even if peace treaty talks started, officials insisted, those sanctions would continue. A month ago, Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told a small audience of foreign policy experts that the sanctions were "the first thing we have done that has gotten their attention," several participants in the meeting said.

Some intelligence officials say they believe the protests may have arisen in part because they affected a secretive operation in North Korea called Unit 39 that finances the personal activities of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, providing the money he spends for his entertainment and to win the loyalty of others in the leadership.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/world/asia/18korea.html?hp&ex=1148011200&en=e93b4d0acc403f02&ei=5094&partner=homepage
 

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