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May
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 11, 2006
1. Democrats Are Fractured Over Strategy, Funds - Washington Post
DCCC Chairman Emanuel, a recreational ballet dancer with the vocabulary of a
longshoreman, stormed out of Howard Dean's office several days ago leaving a
trail of expletives.
2. Tax relief now - Washington Times Op-ed
As the Dow Jones Industrial average climbs to record highs, why would
anybody not want to extend the dividend and capital-gains tax cuts for
another two years? That is a question worth asking Democrats today and in
November.
3. Has the Medicare Drug Plan Turned a Corner? - Time
The Medicare program appears to have come a long way from its inauspicious
beginnings. Recent polls have shown enrollees pleased with the money they've
saved so far on prescriptions, while Medicare officials report that
competition among the insurance companies administering the plans has driven
down monthly premiums.
4. U.S. Recorded a Budget Surplus in April - Wall Street Journal
The federal government ran a monthly budget surplus of $118.85 billion in
April, as tax receipts came in stronger than the same period last year.
Individual income tax receipts for fiscal year 2006 are up 10% from the same
period a year earlier.
5. House Panel Supports Bilingual Voting - Associated Press
The House Judiciary
Committee rejected an effort by conservative House members yesterday to end
a requirement in the Voting Rights Act that bilingual ballots and
interpreters be provided in states and counties where large numbers of
citizens speak limited English.
For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov
FULL ARTICLES BELOW:
1. Democrats Are Fractured Over
Strategy, Funds - Washington Post
By Thomas B. Edsall
Thursday, May 11, 2006; A01
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and the leader of the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have clashed angrily in recent
days in a dispute about how the party should spend its money in advance of
this fall's midterm elections.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who is leading the party's effort to regain
majority status in the House, stormed out of Dean's office several days ago
leaving a trail of expletives, according to Democrats familiar with the
session.
The blowup highlights a long-standing tension that has pitted Democratic
congressional leaders, who are focused on their best opportunities for
electoral gains this fall, against Dean and many state party chairmen, who
believe that the party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up -- even in
states that have traditionally been Republican strongholds.
Emanuel's fury, Democratic officials said, was over his concern that Dean's
DNC is spending its money too freely and too early in the election cycle --
a "burn rate" that some strategists fear will leave the party unable to help
candidates compete on equal terms with Republicans this fall.
Emanuel declined to talk about his meeting with Dean but was blunt about his
concern that the DNC is not managing its resources wisely.
"This is a historic opportunity, and we can't squander it," Emanuel said.
Although Dean has proved to be a more impressive fundraiser than some
skeptical Democrats once thought -- the DNC has taken in $74 million since
the start of this election cycle in 2005 -- he has also been a prolific
spender. Disclosure forms for the first quarter of this year showed the
party with about $10 million in cash on hand. The Republican National
Committee, by contrast, has raised just under $142 million this cycle and
has about $43 million on hand.
Many Washington Democrats think Dean is unwise to spend on field organizers
and other staff in states where House and Senate candidates have little
chance of winning. Dean has maintained that the party cannot strengthen
itself over the long haul unless it competes everywhere.
At a recent breakfast meeting with reporters, Dean said he has crafted a
long-term business plan "and we are going to execute it." He also said, "We
need to be a national party again, and I think we have to run on a message
that can appeal to people in Alabama as well as it can appeal to people in
New York." He declined to be interviewed for this article.
Emanuel, a recreational ballet dancer with the vocabulary of a longshoreman,
has for 15 years fashioned a reputation as one of Washington's most
aggressive figures -- first as an operative on Capitol Hill and in the
Clinton White House, and after 2002 as a representative from Chicago. He was
joined during the Dean confrontation by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.),
chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Schumer, Democratic sources said, did not join in Emanuel's eruption but
does share his concerns about DNC resources.
"The cash on hand is not what we'd like," Schumer told reporters yesterday.
"The amount of money he has raised is good."
For all the heat of the exchange with Emanuel, it fundamentally concerns how
far out on the horizon the party should be focusing.
Dean, arguing for a long-term perspective, said that the party must become a
presence everywhere, even in very Republican states in the South and the
Mountain West. He was elected on an outsider's platform that promised a
"50-state strategy" as the best way to revitalize a party routed from both
the White House and Congress during most of the Bush years. "We have gone
from election to election, and, if we don't win, then we've dug ourselves
into a deep hole and we have nothing to start with," he said. "That is a
cycle that has to be broken."
"The way you build long-term is to succeed short-term," Emanuel countered.
Traditionally, the DNC has been the main conduit to finance get-out-the-vote
programs considered crucial in close elections. The DNC is also allowed to
give cash gifts to the House and Senate committees.
Emanuel, Schumer and other Democratic operatives anticipate that the
better-funded Republican Party structure and its allies will flood
competitive states and districts with money, television ads and other
resources.
"The Republicans are going to muscle their way through the close elections
and use their money to really move the needle in just those few districts
they need to keep control," one Democratic operative warned. Another
complained that the lack of cash on hand at the DNC "leaves us naked."
"We need the DNC on the field in this election," Emanuel said.
A comparison of DNC spending in 2001-2002, the previous off-year cycle, with
2005-2006 shows large increases in expenditures in every major category,
according to the Federal Election Commission and PoliticalMoneyLine.
In the first 15 months of the 2005-2006 cycle, Dean spent $9.7 million on
salaries, compared with $5.7 million over 24 months in 2001-2002. Dean has
spent $2.8 million on political consulting, compared with $1.7 million in
2001-2002.
Dean has shifted the focus of the DNC from major donor solicitations to the
Internet, direct mail and telemarketing gifts -- all of which require higher
fundraising expenditures. Internet consulting and online services cost the
DNC $4.1 million; postage, mailing and telemarketing costs in 2005-2006
totaled $38 million. In all of 2001-2002, the comparable expenditures were
$15.2 million less: $22.8 million.
Other committees in both parties are following a more traditional strategy
of husbanding resources. Emanuel's DCCC raised nearly $58 million this cycle
by the end of March, with $23 million in the bank. Schumer's DSCC raised $56
million, with $32 million on hand.
On the GOP side, the National Republican Congressional Committee raised $83
million, with about $24.5 million on hand, and the National Republican
Senatorial Committee raised $50 million, with $16.5 million on hand.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/10/AR2006051001927_2.html
2. Tax relief now - Washington Times
Op-ed
Published May 11, 2006
On Tuesday, the day the Dow Jones industrial average hit a six-year high
(11,640) and came within 100 points of its record close (11,723), House and
Senate negotiators finalized a five-year, $70 billion tax-relief package
featuring a two-year extension of two important tax cuts that deserve much
of the credit for the Dow's three-year-long rally. Also included in the
package is a one-year, $31 billion patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax
problem, which would otherwise engulf an additional 15.3 million taxpayers.
The House was expected to pass the measure last night; and the Senate, where
it needs a simple majority, could approve the bill today.
Let's review some history. By the end of 2002, relative to their peaks in
early 2000, major U.S. stock indexes had suffered serious setbacks: The 30
Dow industrials were off 29 percent; the broad-based S&P 500 was down 42
percent; and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite had plunged 73 percent. On Jan.
7, 2003, President Bush unveiled a tax-cut package highlighted by the
elimination of the double taxation of stock dividends. In addition to
accelerating the implementation of many of the tax cuts passed in 2001, the
tax package that emerged from Congress in May 2003 reduced the maximum tax
rate on dividends from 38.6 percent to 15 percent, and it cut the top
capital-gains tax rate from 20 percent to 15 percent. However, the dividend
and capital-gains cuts were scheduled to expire at the end of 2008. The tax
package that just emerged from House and Senate negotiations would extend
the maximum 15-percent rates for dividends and capital gains through the end
of 2010, when virtually all of President Bush's 2001 tax cuts are also
scheduled to expire.
What has happened since May 2003, when Mr. Bush signed the law establishing
the 15 percent tax rates for dividends and capital gains? The Dow has
increased by 32 percent; the S&P 500 has gained 39 percent; and the Nasdaq
is up 50 percent. Compared to the $125 billion in capital-gains tax revenues
that the Congressional Budget Office projected for 2004-05 in January 2003
(before the rate cuts), CBO reported in January that the actual
capital-gains revenues for this two-year period (after the tax cuts were
enacted) totaled $151 billion.
Meanwhile, the economy has experienced a major expansion, which took off in
the second quarter of 2003, when the tax rates on dividends and capital
gains were cut. Over the past 12 quarters, for example, U.S. gross domestic
product has increased at an average annual rate of 3.9 percent. Business
investment, which declined during each of the nine quarters preceding the
2003 tax cut, has increased at an average annual rate of 9.1 percent during
the following three years. The economy has added 5.2 million nonfarm payroll
jobs since May 2003 (an average of 150,000 per month), as the unemployment
rate has fallen from its cyclical peak of 6.3 percent in June 2003 to 4.7
percent today. Indeed, today's unemployment rate is lower than the average
of the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s and 1960s. And if the two-year extension of the
15 percent tax rate for dividends and capital gains helps to reduce the
unemployment rate to 4.5 percent, then it would be lower than the average
rate for the 1950s, too.
With that kind of history, why would anybody not want to extend the dividend
and capital-gains tax cuts for another two years? That is a question worth
asking Democrats today and in November.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060510-093238-3506r.htm
3. Has the Medicare Drug Plan Turned a
Corner? - Time
As the May 15 deadline approaches, the Bush administration claims the early
problems have been solved and seniors are signing on
By DOUGLAS WALLER
Posted Wednesday, May. 10, 2006
It's the home stretch for enrolling seniors in Medicare's new drug benefit,
which President Bush hopes will eventually give him a lift in his sagging
poll numbers. So it's no surprise that the President and other top
Administration officials have hit the road this week, pitching hard to
convince more of the elderly to sign up before the Monday deadline and
insisting that they are past the program's initially ragged start.
On Tuesday, Bush toured America's retirement haven, Florida, pleading with
seniors not to miss out on what he calls "a fantastic opportunity." "We want
people to understand that they are going to save a lot of money when it
comes to prescription drugs," Bush told dozens of elderly who had gathered
at Ft. Lauderdale's Broward Community College for enrollment help from
government officials, as loudspeakers played Frank Sinatra's "Young At
Heart."
The community college event is one of a thousand the federal government is
hosting around the country in a final drive to sign people up for the
benefit. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt plans to visit
24 cities this week to plug the program. His department also has added 6,000
phone operators to field last-minute questions from seniors and quadrupled
its computer capacity to handle a late surge of applications. Leavitt
estimates that of the 43 million eligible for the drug benefit, 38 million
are now covered by Medicare or other government programs. He told the
Associated Press on Sunday that 90% could be covered before the May 15
deadline, "which would be a remarkable outcome for the first year of the
program." After May 15, seniors who haven't signed up must pay a penalty if
they enroll, and the Administration has refused demands from Democrats to
extend the deadline.
The Medicare program appears to have come a long way from its inauspicious
beginnings, when millions of seniors were frustrated in signing up for the
complex benefit or couldn't get their drugs after they enrolled because of
computer glitches. Recent polls have shown enrollees pleased with the money
they've saved so far on prescriptions, while Medicare officials report that
competition among the insurance companies administering the plans has driven
down monthly premiums from the $37 originally projected to $25.
The good news is a relief for Republicans like Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman,
who in January was besieged by elderly voters in his state angry over snafus
in the program. Today he's hearing from seniors "who are raving about the
money they're now saving on their monthly prescription drug plans," Coleman
says. "The program is working."
But it may not be working for the ones who need it most. While middle- and
upper-income seniors have been enrolling at a high rate, the consumer
watchdog group Families USA released a report Tuesday noting that only about
one-fourth of low-income seniors have signed up for the benefit. Of the 7.2
million seniors with incomes less than $14,700, just 1.7 million had
enrolled in the program as of April 28, according to the organization's
survey of state statistics. "The President and congressional leaders said
their top priority was to sign up low-income seniors, so this is terribly
disappointing," says Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. "These
are the people who need the help the most." Medicare spokesman Peter
Ashkenaz acknowledges that the low-income elderly have been "a difficult
group to reach," but he points out that they are exempt from the May 15
deadline and officials will continue to try to sign up more of them
throughout the year.
Seniors still find it difficult to choose among the program's many plans and
the complicated coverage rules. The Government Accountability Office
reported last week that its investigators posing as seniors found Medicare
operators routinely providing inaccurate or incomplete benefit information.
(The Administration points out that the GAO study was done between Jan. 17
and Feb. 7 and insists those problems have since been corrected.)
In the coming months, seniors' reviews of the program may also turn sour as
they approach the "doughnut hole," the term given for the gap in coverage
after a beneficiary receives the first $2,250 in Medicare payments. The
senior then must pay the next $2,850 in costs until the bill reaches $5,100
and Medicare resumes paying. For many seniors who signed up early, the
doughnut hole will soon arrive. "Once they hit it, they're going to be
enormously surprised and upset," says Pollack. "When they're in the doughnut
hole and they pay 100% of their drug costs, they still have to pay the
monthly premium. So this is like going to a gas station and all of a sudden
there's no gas going into your car, but the dollar signs keep on going up."
If frustration with the Medicare drug program reaches anywhere near the
anger at the pumps, the Bush administration's celebration could turn out to
be premature.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1192812,00.html
4. U.S. Recorded a Budget Surplus in
April - Wall Street Journal
By BENTON IVES-HALPERIN
May 11, 2006; Page A9
WASHINGTON -- The federal government ran a monthly budget surplus of $118.85
billion in April, as tax receipts came in stronger than the same period last
year.
Buoyed by income during the spring tax season, government ledgers in April
swung into the black following March's deficit of $85.47 billion. Receipts
in April were $315.09 billion, up 13% from $277.61 billion a year earlier,
and the second highest on record, just below the $332 billion in April 2001.
The April total budget surplus was the fourth highest monthly surplus on
record, but slightly less than the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of
a $120 billion surplus for the month.
The Treasury estimates the U.S. government ran a budget deficit for the
first seven months of fiscal 2006 -- October through April -- of $184.14
billion. That is down 22% from the fiscal year-to-date deficit a year
earlier.
Officially, the White House has projected the budget deficit for the current
fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, 2006, will total $423 billion, about one-third
larger than last year.
But the CBO has projected a budget gap under $350 billion, and perhaps as
low as $300 billion, for the full fiscal year, and private-sector forecasts
also tend to show less red ink than the Bush administration's official
outlook.
The CBO's full-year deficit projections have been revised down from an
earlier $371 billion estimate.
Individual income tax receipts totaled $601.53 billion in fiscal 2006
through April, up 10% from the same period a year earlier, the Treasury
said. Corporate taxes totaled $174.26 billion for the first seven months of
the fiscal year, up 30% from the same period a year earlier.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114729474101449352.html?mod=politics_primary_hs
5. House Panel Supports Bilingual
Voting - Associated Press
By FREDERIC J. FROMMER
What was to have been a simple renewal of the historic Voting Rights Act has
become snarled in the heated debate involving immigration issues.
Conservative House members tried Wednesday to end a requirement in the 1965
law that bilingual ballots and interpreters be provided in states and
counties where large numbers of citizens speak limited English.
The House Judiciary Committee rejected the effort.
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said voting in English should pose no problem for
any U.S. citizen.
"If you are born in America, you should know English," he said. "If you are
a naturalized citizen, you should have passed an English proficiency test."
The committee voted 26-9 against amending the law, which ended racist
practices such as poll taxes and literacy tests in Southern states, so it no
longer would require the bilingual ballots and interpreters. The chairman,
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., expressed regret that the immigration and
voting rights issues had become enmeshed.
"Here we are not dealing with illegal immigrants, we are dealing with U.S.
citizens," Sensenbrenner said. He has angered many Hispanics as the author
of a House-passed bill that would make being an illegal immigrant a felony.
About 500 political subdivisions in 31 states must offer bilingual
assistance. Of those states, five _ Alaska, Arizona, California, New Mexico
and Texas _ must provide the assistance statewide.
Later, the committee voted 33-1 to extend the law, due to expire next year,
for 25 more years. Only Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who offered the amendment
to strike the bilingual ballots, voted against it.
Republicans voted 11-9 against King's amendment. Democrats opposed it
unanimously.
"At a time when the U.S. is experiencing record immigration, it is essential
that we return to this tradition" of using ballots only in English, King
said.
Sensenbrenner noted that Spanish is spoken in Puerto Rico, and that many
people from that territory settle on the mainland.
"They are just as much U.S. citizens as anybody else," he said. "... I
believe they should have access to bilingual ballots."
Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, said people who do not speak English will not
be able to succeed in this country. He told of a Hispanic neighbor who
requires his children to speak English in the home with that philosophy in
mind.
That prompted a heated reply from Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., who recalled
that when she was a child, she spoke English in school and Spanish at home.
"That hasn't prevented me or my sister from reaching our full potential,"
said Sanchez, whose sister, Loretta Sanchez, is a Democratic congresswoman
from California.
Sensenbrenner said he expects the bill to come up for a vote in the full
House next week.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/10/D8HH7HV80.html
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