In Virginia, Bloomberg blasts Trump for Navy leader’s ouster

NORFOLK, Va. -New presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg traveled to the city that hosts the world’s largest Navy base on Monday and blasted President Donald Trump over the recent ouster of the nation’s Navy secretary.

For the first stop of his Democratic campaign, Bloomberg went to Norfolk, where he criticized Trump over the firing of Richard Spencer. The civilian leader of the Navy said he could not in good conscience follow an order by the president to allow a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes to retire without losing his SEAL status.

“The fact remains: We have a president, a commander in chief, who has no respect for the rule of law, and no concern whatsoever for ethics or honor, or for the values that truly make America great,” Bloomberg told a group of reporters at a downtown hotel.

Virginia is a critical Super Tuesday state that is key to Bloomberg’s campaign strategy of bypassing early states to focus on the crush of states that vote later in the cycle. And the locale offered the billionaire and former mayor of New York City more than just the latest controversy in Washington to promote his platform.

The neighboring city of Virginia Beach suffered a mass shooting on May 31 that killed 12 people at a municipal complex. Bloomberg, 77, said that such shootings have become “almost routine” and that “we have to put an end to this madness.”

Gun control is a hallmark of Bloomberg’s political identity. His group, Everytown for Gun Safety, has pumped more than $6 million into Virginia campaigns alone in recent years to support like-minded Democrats, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

Democrats retook both chambers in Virginia’s Legislature earlier this month. Bloomberg said it was proof that “with the right candidate, we can turn areas from red to blue.”

Bloomberg, a centrist who became a Democrat last year, joined the presidential race Sunday, just 10 weeks before primary voting begins. His Democratic rivals have already pounced on his plans to rely on his personal fortunes to fund his campaign, accusing him of trying to buy an election.

Bloomberg said Trump was a “threat to our country, to our values and our national security.” But he also cast doubt on the crowded field of Democrats whose performance, he insinuated, forced him into the race.

“I think that there is a greater risk of having Donald Trump reelected than there was before,” Bloomberg told reporters. “And in the end, I looked in the mirror and said that I just cannot let this happen.”

The former Republican touted a platform that also focused on combating sea-level rise, economic inequality and health care.
He said he’s already beaten Trump in other arenas, at least symbolically, devoting tens of millions of dollars to pursue policy priorities that are in sharp contrast to the president’s.


For instance, Bloomberg has helped shutter 282 coal plants in the United States and organized a coalition of American cities on track to cut 75 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2025.

“I know what it takes to beat Trump because we already have, and I will do it again,” Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg also chatted with people at a diner in downtown Norfolk that was mobbed with reporters and at least some people who were eager to support him.

Among them was Craig Schranz, 43, an emergency medicine physician who said he’s fiscally conservative and socially liberal like Bloomberg is. He praised Bloomberg for not “vilifying” capitalism and for supporting a health care plan that doesn’t eliminate private-payer health insurance.

“I think he’s someone who knows how to govern,” said Schranz, who said he had supported former Vice President Joe Biden before Bloomberg joined the race. “I think he’s going to implement sound policy that we need.”

Bloomberg plans to go to Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday.

GSG
source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Impeachment hearings go live on TV with first witnesses

WASHINGTON — The closed doors of the Trump impeachment investigation are swinging wide open.

When the gavel strikes at the start of the House hearing Wednesday morning, America and the rest of the world will have the chance to see and hear for themselves for the first time about President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine and consider whether they are, in fact, impeachable offenses.

It’s a remarkable moment, even for a White House full of them.

All on TV, committee leaders will set the stage, then comes the main feature: Two seasoned diplomats, William Taylor, the graying former infantry officer now charge d’affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in Washington, telling the striking, if sometimes complicated story of a president allegedly using foreign policy for personal and political gain ahead of the 2020 election.


So far, the narrative is splitting Americans, mostly along the same lines as Trump’s unusual presidency. The Constitution sets a dramatic, but vague, bar for impeachment, and there’s no consensus yet that Trump’s actions at the heart of the inquiry meet the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Whether Wednesday’s proceedings begin to end a presidency or help secure Trump’s position, it’s certain that his chaotic term has finally arrived at a place he cannot control and a force, the constitutional system of checks and balances, that he cannot ignore.

The country has been here just three times before, and never against the backdrop of social media and real-time commentary, including from the president himself.


“These hearings will address subjects of profound consequence for the Nation and the functioning of our government under the Constitution,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee leading the inquiry, in a memo to lawmakers.

Schiff called it a “solemn undertaking,” and counseled colleagues to “approach these proceedings with the seriousness of purpose and love of country that they demand.”

“Total impeachment scam,” tweeted the president, as he does virtually every day.

Impeachments are rare, historians say, because they amount to nothing short of the nullification of an election. Starting down this road poses risks for both Democrats and Republicans as proceedings push into the 2020 campaign.

Unlike the Watergate hearings and Richard Nixon, there is not yet a “cancer on the presidency” moment galvanizing public opinion. Nor is there the national shrug, as happened when Bill Clinton’s impeachment ultimately didn’t result in his removal from office. It’s perhaps most like the partisanship-infused impeachment of Andrew Johnson after the Civil War.

Trump calls the whole thing a “witch hunt,” a retort that echoes Nixon’s own defense. Republicans say Democrats have been trying to get rid of this president since he first took office, starting with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference to help Trump in the 2016 election.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was initially reluctant to launch a formal impeachment inquiry. As Democrats took control of the House in January, Pelosi said impeachment would be “too divisive” for the country. Trump, she said, was simply “not worth it.”

After Mueller’s appearance on Capitol Hill in July for the end of the Russia probe, the door to impeachment proceedings seemed closed.

But the next day Trump got on the phone.

For the past month, witness after witness has testified under oath about his July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the alarms it set off in U.S. diplomatic and national security circles.

In a secure room in the Capitol basement, current and former officials have been telling lawmakers what they know. They’ve said an earlier Trump call in April congratulating Zelenskiy on his election victory seemed fine. The former U.S. reality TV host and the young Ukrainian comedian hit it off.

But in the July call, things turned.

An anonymous whistleblower first alerted officials to the phone call. “I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election,” the person wrote in August to the House and Senate Intelligence committees. Democrats fought for the letter to be released to them as required.

“I am deeply concerned,” the whistleblower wrote.

Trump insisted the call was “perfect.” The White House released a rough transcript. Pelosi, given the nod from her most centrist freshman lawmakers, opened the inquiry.

“The president has his opportunity to prove his innocence,” she told Noticias Telemundo on Tuesday.

Defying White House orders not to appear, witnesses have testified that Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was withholding U.S. military aid to the budding democracy until the new Ukraine government conducted investigations Trump wanted into Democrats in the 2016 election and his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter.

It was all part of what Taylor, the long-serving top diplomat in Ukraine, called the “irregular” foreign policy being led by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, outside of traditional channels.

Taylor said it was “crazy” that the Trump administration was withholding U.S. military assistance to the East European ally over the political investigations, with Russian forces on Ukraine’s border on watch for a moment of weakness.

Kent, the bowtie-wearing State Department official, told investigators there were three things Trump wanted of Ukraine: “Investigations, Biden, Clinton.”

On Friday, the public is scheduled to hear from Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who told investigators she was warned to “watch my back” as Trump undercut and then recalled her.

Eight more witnesses will testify in public hearings next week.

“What this affords is the opportunity for the cream of our diplomatic corps to tell the American people a clear and consistent story of what the president did,” said Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., a member of the Intelligence panel.

“It takes a lot of courage to do what they are doing,” he said, “and they are probably just going to be abused for it.”


Republicans, led on the panel by Rep. Devin Nunes, a longtime Trump ally from California, will argue that none of those witnesses has first-hand knowledge of the president’s actions. They will say Ukraine never felt pressured and the aid money eventually flowed, in September.

Yet Republicans are struggling to form a unified defense of Trump. Instead they often fall back on criticism of the process.

Some Republicans align with Trump’s view, which is outside of mainstream intelligence findings, that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election interference. They want to hear from Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, Burisma, while his father was the vice president. And they are trying to bring forward the still-anonymous whistleblower, whose identity Democrats have vowed to protect.

The framers of the Constitution provided few details about how the impeachment proceedings should be run, leaving much for Congress to decide. Democrats say the White House’s refusal to provide witnesses or produce documents is obstruction and itself impeachable.

Hearings are expected to continue and will shift, likely by Thanksgiving, to the Judiciary Committee to consider actual articles of impeachment.

The House, which is controlled by Democrats, is expected to vote by Christmas.

That would launch a trial in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority, in the new year.

/atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

White House and Dems fight over rules for impeachment

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Constitution gives the House “the sole power of impeachment” — but it confers that authority without an instruction manual.

Now comes the battle royal over exactly what it means.

In vowing to halt all cooperation with House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, the White House on Tuesday labeled the investigation “illegitimate” based on its own reading of the Constitution’s vague language.

In an eight-page letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone pointed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s failure to call for an official vote to proceed with the inquiry as grounds to claim the process a farce.


“You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process,” Cipollone wrote.

But Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee, told a federal judge Tuesday that it’s clear the House “sets its own rules” on how the impeachment process will play out.

The White House document lacked much in the way of legal arguments, seemingly citing cable TV news appearances as often as case law. And legal experts cast doubt upon its effectiveness.

“I think the goal of this letter is to further inflame the president’s supporters and attempt to delegitimize the process in the eyes of his supporters,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas.

Courts have been historically hesitant to step in as referee for congressional oversight and impeachment. In 1993, the Supreme Court held that impeachment was an issue for the Congress and not the courts.

In that case, Walter Nixon, a federal district judge who was removed from office, sought to be reinstated and argued that the full Senate, instead of a committee that was established to hear testimony and collect evidence, should have heard the evidence against him.

The court unanimously rejected the challenge, finding impeachment is a function of the legislature that the court had no authority over.


As for the current challenge to impeachment, Vladeck said the White House letter “does not strike me as an effort to provide sober legal analysis.”

Gregg Nunziata, a Philadelphia attorney who previously served as general counsel and policy adviser to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, said the White House’s letter did not appear to be written in a “traditional good-faith back and forth between the legislative and executive branches.”

He called it a “direct assault on the very legitimacy of Congress’ oversight power.”

“The Founders very deliberately chose to put the impeachment power in a political branch rather the Supreme Court,” Nunziata told The Associated Press. “They wanted this to be a political process and it is.”

G. Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said the letter appeared to act as nothing more than an accelerant on a smoldering fire.

“It’s a response that seems to welcome a constitutional crisis rather than defusing one or pointing toward some strategy that would deescalate the situation,” Cross said.

After two weeks of a listless and unfocused response to the impeachment probe, the White House letter amounted to a declaration of war.

It’s a strategy that risks further provoking Democrats in the impeachment probe, setting up court challenges and the potential for lawmakers to draw up an article of impeachment accusing President Donald Trump of obstructing their investigations.

Democrats have said that if the White House does not provide the information, they could write an article of impeachment on obstruction of justice.

It is unclear if Democrats would wade into a lengthy legal fight with the administration over documents and testimony or if they would just move straight to considering articles of impeachment.


House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Democrat-California, who is leading the Ukraine probe, has said Democrats will “have to decide whether to litigate, or how to litigate.”

But they don’t want the fight to drag on for months, as he said the Trump administration seems to want to do.

A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday on whether the House had undertaken a formal impeachment inquiry despite not having taken an official vote and whether it can be characterized, under the law, as a “judicial proceeding.”

The distinction matters because while grand jury testimony is ordinarily secret, one exception authorizes a judge to disclose it in connection with a judicial proceeding. House Democrats are seeking grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as they conduct the impeachment inquiry.

/atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

GOP split over impeachment pushback as Dems plow ahead

WASHINGTON — The president’s lawyer insists the real story is a debunked conspiracy theory. A senior White House adviser blames the “deep state.” And a Republican congressman is pointing at Joe Biden’s son.

As the Democrats drive an impeachment inquiry toward a potential vote by the end of the year, President Donald Trump’s allies are struggling over how he should manage the starkest threat to his presidency. The jockeying broke into the open Sunday on the talk show circuit, with a parade of Republicans erupting into a surge of second-guessing.

At the top of the list: Rudy Giuliani’s false charge that it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 elections. The former New York mayor has been encouraging Ukraine to investigate both Biden and Hillary Clinton.

“I am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again,” said Tom Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security adviser. “That conspiracy theory has got to go, they have to stop with that, it cannot continue to be repeated.”

Not only did Giuliani repeat it Sunday, he brandished pieces of paper he said were affidavits supporting his story.

“Tom Bossert doesn’t know what’s he’s talking about,” Guiliani said. He added that Trump was framed by the Democrats.

Senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, meanwhile, noted that he’s worked in the federal government “for nearly three years.”

“I know the difference between whistleblower and a deep state operative,” Miller said. “This is a deep state operative, pure and simple.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, heatedly said Trump was merely asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to root out corruption. That, Jordan said, includes Hunter Biden’s membership on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either of the Bidens.

Mixed messaging reflects the difficulty Republicans are having defending the president against documents released by the White House that feature Trump’s own words and actions. A partial transcript and a whistleblower complaint form the heart of the House impeachment inquiry and describe Trump pressuring a foreign president to investigate Biden’s family.

In a series of tweets Sunday night, Trump said he deserved to meet “my accuser” as well as whoever provided the whistleblower with what the president called “largely incorrect” information. He also accused Democrats of “doing great harm to our Country” in an effort to destabilize the nation and the 2020 election.

Trump has insisted the call was “perfect” and pushed to release both documents.

“He didn’t even know that it was wrong,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, describing a phone call from Trump in which the president suggested the documents would exonerate him.

But Democrats seized on them as evidence that Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” by asking for a foreign leader’s help undermining a political rival, Democrat Joe Biden. Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry and on Sunday told other Democrats that public sentiment had swung behind the probe.

By all accounts, the Democratic impeachment effort was speeding ahead with a fair amount of coordination between Pelosi, Democratic messaging experts and its political operation.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that he expects the whistleblower to testify “very soon,” though details were still being worked out and no date had been set. Hearings and depositions were starting this week. Many Democrats are pushing for a vote on articles of impeachment before the end of the year, mindful of the looming 2020 elections.

Schiff said in one interview that his committee intends to subpoena Giuliani for documents and may eventually want to hear from Giuliani directly. In a separate TV appearance, Giuliani said he would not cooperate with Schiff, but then acknowledged he would do what Trump tells him. The White House did not provide an official response on whether the president would allow Giuliani to cooperate.

Lawyers for the whistleblower expressed concern about that individual’s safety, noting that some have offered a $50,000 “bounty” for the whistleblower’s identity. They said they expect the situation to become even more dangerous for their client and any other whistleblowers, as Congress seeks to investigate this matter.

On a conference call Sunday, Pelosi, traveling in Texas, urged Democrats to proceed “not with negative attitudes towards him, but a positive attitude towards our responsibility,” according to an aide on the call who shared the exchange on condition of anonymity. Polling, Pelosi said, had changed “drastically” in the Democrats’ favor.

A one-day NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Sept. 25 found that about half of Americans — 49% — approve of the House formally starting an impeachment inquiry into Trump.

There remains a stark partisan divide on the issue, with 88% of Democrats approving and 93% of Republicans disapproving of the inquiry. But the findings suggest some movement in opinions on the issue. Earlier polls conducted throughout Trump’s presidency have consistently found a majority saying he should not be impeached and removed from office.


House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York urged the caucus to talk about impeachment by repeating the words “betrayal, abuse of power, national security.” The Democrats’ campaign arm swung behind lawmakers to support the impeachment drive as they run for reelection, according to another call participant to spoke on condition of anonymity.

The contrast with the Republicans’ selection of responses was striking.

A combative House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said that nothing in Trump’s phone call rose to the level of an impeachable offense.

“Why would we move forward on impeachment?” the California Republican said. “There’s not something that you have to defend here.”

Bossert, an alumnus of Republican George W. Bush’s administration, offered a theory and some advice to Trump: Move past the fury over the 2016 Russia investigation, in which special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of conspiracy but plenty of examples of Trump’s obstruction.

“I honestly believe this president has not gotten his pound of flesh yet from past grievances on the 2016 investigation,” Bossert said. “If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”

Two advisers to the Biden campaign sent a letter Sunday urging major news networks to stop booking Giuliani on their shows, accusing Trump’s personal attorney of spreading “false, debunked conspiracy theories” on behalf of the president.

The letter to management and anchors of shows at ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News added: “By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”

/atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Shocking News: Trump Impeachment

More than half of House Democrats support launching impeachment proceedings against US President Donald Trump, media tallies showed Friday, a milestone that progressives hope will move Speaker Nancy Pelosi off of her resistance to opening an inquiry.

Of the 235 voting Democrats, 118 have publicly stated their support for beginning the procedures aimed at removing Trump from office, with the symbolic threshold being crossed when congressman Ted Deutch of Florida came out in favor on Thursday.

Momentum has steadily built in the days since former special counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress about his two-year investigation of Russian election interference and potential obstruction of justice by Trump.

Deutch became the 23rd Democratic lawmaker to support the proceedings since Mueller went before Congress and, in Deutch’s words, “confirmed the damning conclusions of his report.”
The Mueller report details how Russia interfered in “sweeping and systematic fashion” in Trump’s favor during the 2016 US presidential election campaign.

It sets out how the Trump campaign welcomed that help and repeatedly lied about it.

Democrats argue that Mueller also provided evidence for 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice by the president.

Surpassing the 50 percent threshold could be key because Pelosi has repeatedly stated her opposition to impeachment in part because the bulk of her caucus remained against launching proceedings.

Instead, she prefers letting the several ongoing House investigations of Trump and his administration take their course.

In June, when Pelosi was asked whether she would support an impeachment inquiry if a majority of Democrats backed it, she declined to answer a hypothetical.
“It’s not even close in our caucus,” Pelosi said while adding that impeachment was “not off the table.”

Pelosi has regularly noted that impeaching Trump would almost certainly lead to an acquittal in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority and allow Trump to claim vindication and fire up his core supporters as he seeks re-election.

Some House Democrats argue that it is their constitutional duty to take action when they see evidence of presidential wrongdoing, regardless of the political ramifications.

Meanwhile, congressman Will Hurd, the only African-American Republican in the House and the only Republican representing a district on the US-Mexico border, announced he will not seek re-election in 2020.

Hurd joins five other Republicans, several of them in swing districts, who announced their retirements in the last two weeks, a blow to party efforts to reclaim the House majority.

source: usa.inquirer.ne

Impeachment unsettled as Democrats enter post-Mueller moment

WASHINGTON — Midway through the first year of their House majority, Democrats have yet to vote to impeach President Donald Trump. And maybe they never will.

The House recessed Friday for a six-week summer break without opening impeachment proceedings, the Democrats no closer to taking a vote than they were when they swept to power at the start of the year, a searing blow to liberals in the aftermath of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s halting testimony on Capitol Hill.


Yet, the House Judiciary Committee filed a fresh lawsuit Friday, its lawyers arguing they need documents from the Trump administration as they pursue questions of impeachment. It mentions the word impeachment 76 times.

The committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, said his panel is pressing ahead with investigating the president, with or without a formal House vote.

“I think too much has been made of the phrase impeachment inquiry,” Nadler said Friday.

“We are using our full Article I powers to investigate the conduct of the president and to consider what remedies there are,” he said, referring to the Constitution. “Among other things we will consider are obviously recommending articles of impeachment.”

The action underscores the tensions among a House majority that’s trying to have it both ways, preserving the idea of impeachment while avoiding a potentially risky vote.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed back criticism that she’s “running out the clock,” as about 100 Democrats in the 435-member House favor opening an impeachment inquiry, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

“We will proceed when we have what we need to proceed, not one day sooner,” Pelosi said Friday during her weekly news conference.

“Everybody has the liberty and the luxury to espouse their own position,” she said, “and to criticize me for trying to go down the path in the most determined positive way.”

Pelosi said she has “no complaints” against those pushing for impeachment. Their advocacy, she said, “only gives me leverage.”

With the House unable, or unwilling, to impeach Trump, it intensifies the pressure on the party to figure out how to defeat the president in the 2020 election.

House Democrats capped their 200th day in the majority with a long list of bills — on raising the minimum wage, strengthening immigration protections — that give voters a view of how their party would govern in the White House. An outside group started running ads, including on Fox News this week, to promote their agenda.

“These people are clowns,” Trump said Friday in remarks at the White House. “The Democrats are clowns.”

As if to shore up the left flank, Pelosi met earlier Friday with liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in an apparent easing of tensions with the “squad” of newcomers as they pursue shared goals.

Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesman called it a “very positive and productive meeting about progressive priorities.”

Pelosi said, “What we’re advocating for is a progressive agenda for our country.”

Yet no sooner had Pelosi stepped away from the podium than members of the Judiciary Committee stepped up to declare they were essentially well on their way to impeachment proceedings.

“This is an impeachment investigation,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., “whether we should recommend articles of impeachment to our caucus.”

Freshmen Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, said, “I think especially as folks go home, my hope is that, in addition to talking about all the important kitchen table things that we all came here to work on, that there is an honest discussion within our own communities about whether we can continue to tolerate a lawless president.”

Asked whether he favored impeachment, Nadler took a long pause. 



“We may decide to recommend articles of impeachment at some point, we may not, it remains to be seen,” Nadler said.

The committee’s court filing Friday was an effort to obtain secret grand jury material underlying Mueller’s report.

The court petition is among a half-dozen legal actions the House is taking against the Trump administration as part of Pelosi’s step-by-step strategy of building a case against the president. The Democrats contend that Trump is obstructing Congress’s constitutional ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch by withholding documents and preventing witnesses from testifying.

Democrats, including Pelosi, often note that the third article of impeachment against Richard Nixon was his obstruction of Congress.

Next week, Nadler is expected to file a lawsuit to try to enforce a subpoena against Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel and a key Mueller witness. It challenges the administration’s claim that its former employees have “absolute immunity” from testifying before Congress.

So in some ways the House is well on its way to impeachment without having to vote on it, as it conducts investigations and files lawsuits to build its case.

“Impeachment isn’t a binary thing that you either are or you aren’t,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa.

“What we’ve been saying and what we’ve been doing is starting a process where we’re engaging in an investigation to see if we should recommend articles of impeachment,” she said. “It’s a process. We started it some months ago in some ways.”

Catering to centrist Democrats, the dozens of lawmakers who helped secure the House majority, the strategy protects those who come from districts where Trump is popular and may not want to have to take a vote on impeachment. Yet it infuriates the liberal flank, the core of the party’s activists.

After Mueller testified, Pelosi assembled Democrats behind closed doors and offered the path forward. 



Pelosi told them that if they wanted to come out publicly in favor of impeachment, to do it in a way that did not make it a moral imperative. The next morning, she delivered a similar message, telling lawmakers to say what they want about impeachment, but to do it in way that doesn’t challenge other Democrats’ views.

The comments were relayed by three people familiar with the private meetings. They were unauthorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some Democrats grumbled that the investigations were becoming “endless,” according to one of the people.

But others say Democrats were elected to the House in large part because voters want them to stand up to Trump. If they don’t, they say their majority faces potential blowback in 2020.

“I think the ramifications are simply that we will have the ball and we fumbled it,” said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. “I think we need to do the appropriate thing regardless of the outcome.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Trump sends racist tweet against Dem lawmakers

WASHINGTON— Starkly injecting race into his criticism of liberal Democrats, President Donald Trump said four congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the U.S. His attack drew a searing condemnation from Democrats who labeled the remarks racist and breathtakingly divisive.

Following a familiar script, Republicans remained largely silent after Trump’s Sunday morning broadsides against the four women. But the president’s nativist tweets caused Democrats to set aside their internal rifts to rise up in a united chorus against the president.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump wants to “make America white again.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, after jousting for days with Pelosi, said Trump “can’t conceive of an America that includes us.”

Trump, who has a long history of making racist remarks, was almost certainly referring to Ocasio-Cortez and her House allies in what’s become known as “the squad.” The others are Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Only Omar, from Somalia, is foreign-born.

Ocasio-Cortez swiftly denounced his remarks . “Mr. President, the country I ‘come from,’ & the country we all swear to, is the United States,” she tweeted, adding that “You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.” Omar also addressed herself directly to Trump in a tweet, writing: “You are stoking white nationalism (because) you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, summed up the Democratic response: “Racial arsonist strikes again. Shut. Your. Reckless. Mouth.”


With his tweet, Trump inserted himself further into a rift between Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez, just two days after he offered an unsolicited defense of the Democratic speaker. Pelosi has been seeking to minimize Ocasio-Cortez’s influence in the House Democratic caucus in recent days, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to accuse Pelosi of trying to marginalize women of color.

“She is not a racist,” Trump said of Pelosi on Friday.

On Sunday, Trump’s tone took a turn.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” he tweeted.

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”

He added: “These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

The attacks may have been meant to widen the divides within the Democrat caucus, which has been riven by internal debate over how far left to go in countering Trump and over whether to proceed with impeachment proceedings against the president. Instead, the president’s tweets, which evoked the trope of telling black people to go back to Africa, brought Democrats together.

“Let’s be clear about what this vile comment is: A racist and xenophobic attack on Democratic congresswomen,” tweeted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate.

Another 2020 contender, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, tweeted at the president: “This is racist. These congresswomen are every bit as American as you — and represent our values better than you ever will.”

Few Republicans weighed in on the president’s comments. Congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Sen. Tim. Scott of South Carolina, the only Republican black senator.

Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in a previously scheduled appearance on “Face the Nation” on CBS, said only: “You’re going to have to ask the president what he means by those specific tweets.”

Shortly after the tweets, and a later presidential post defending the harsh scenes at a border detention facility where hundreds of migrant men are being held in sweltering, foul-smelling conditions, Trump left the White House to go golfing at his Virginia club.

Trump appeared unbowed Sunday night when he returned to Twitter to say it was “so sad” to see Democrats sticking up for the women. “If the Democrat Party wants to continue to condone such disgraceful behavior,” he tweeted, “then we look even more forward to seeing you at the ballot box in 2020!”

It was far from the first time that Trump has been accused of holding racist views.

In his campaign kickoff in June 2015, Trump deemed many Mexican immigrants “rapists.” In 2017, he said there good people on “both sides” of the clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacists and anti-racist demonstrators that left one counter-protester dead. Last year, during a private White House meeting on immigration, Trump wondered why the United States was admitting so many immigrants from “shithole countries” like African nations.

Repeatedly, Trump has painted arriving immigrants as an “infestation” and he has been slow in condemning acts of violence committed by white supremacists. And he launched his political career with false claims that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

Despite his history of racist remarks, Trump has paid little penalty in his own party.

Though a broad array of Republicans did speak out against his reaction to Charlottesville, they have largely held their tongues otherwise, whether it be on matter of race or any other Trump provocation. Fearful of his Twitter account and sweeping popularity among Republican voters, GOP lawmakers have largely tried to ignore the provocative statements.

Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democratic presidential hopeful from California, tweeted, “Let’s call the president’s racist attack exactly what it is: un-American.”

Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was born in the Bronx, New York, and raised in suburban Westchester County.

Pressley, the first black woman elected to the House from Massachusetts, was born in Cincinnati.

Omar, the first Somali native elected to Congress and one of its first Muslim women, was born in Somalia but spent much of her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp as civil war tore apart her home country. She immigrated to the United States at age 12, teaching herself English by watching American TV and eventually settling with her family in Minneapolis.

Tlaib was born in Detroit.

source: usa.inquirer.net

Trump economic agenda likely checked by Democratic election gains

WASHINGTON, United States – Against the backdrop of a strong economy, Republicans avoided blowout losses in the key US midterm vote but President Trump’s economic agenda will be sharply curtailed by Democratic gains.

With a divided Congress starting next year, and the 2020 race for the White House now underway, the polarization in Washington means major economic legislation is highly unlikely, analysts said following Tuesday’s nationwide elections.

However, Republicans almost certainly would have faced steeper losses if not for the low unemployment, rising wages and strong economic growth now prevailing, boosted by recent Republican-driven tax cuts as well as a bipartisan stimulus package in this year’s budget.

Despite the prospect of partisan deadlock in the new Congress, Wall Street rallied Wednesday as investors put the elections’ uncertainty behind them.

Analysts said the divided Congress meant there were few threats to profits from new legislation.

“I think the Democrats would certainly be a line of defense against any further tax cuts,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, senior economist at Oxford Economics.

“I think we may see gridlock on major things but some chance for agreement on a modest infrastructure package,” she told AFP.

Republican leaders had been bracing for a backlash against Trump, with the potential losses in the House of Representatives well beyond the 23 seats Democrats needed to seize control.

Some races were still too close to call early Wednesday but even with Democrats winning nearly 30 seats, the result clearly fell far short of Republicans’ worst fears of losing 40 or more.


Avoiding talk of the economy
The solid US economy likely stemmed the Republican losses.

“The economy is what’s keeping Republicans competitive despite Trump. It’s a very weird situation,” Gary Jacobson, emeritus professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, told AFP late Tuesday.


Republicans were caught in the crossfire between Trump’s unpopularity and the economy’s strength, he said.

“Normally a president with an economy like the one we have now would be 10, maybe even 20 points higher,” Jacobson said. “It’s clear that if the economy hadn’t been that good there would have been a real blow out.”

Republicans largely avoided campaigning on the 2017 tax cuts, which were passed without a single Democratic vote and which many voters saw as a giveaway to the wealthy and major corporations.

Even Trump focused on other issues, including stoking immigration fears to motivate his base in the campaign’s dying days.

“We can talk about the economy but the fact is we know how well we’re doing with the economy,” Trump said over the weekend at a Florida rally. “I want to solve problems.”

Midterm elections typically do not hinge on economic concerns and a CNN exit poll showed the economy ranked third among the most important issues for voters nationwide, behind health care and immigration but ahead of gun policy.

Democratic candidates highlighted on health care, seeking to capitalize on the many unpopular and unsuccessful Republican efforts to repeal the 2010 legislation providing access to affordable health care and protecting those with pre-existing medical conditions.

“The economy is too good to have to say anything about it in defense. That’s why it was health care, health care, health care,” John Aldrich, professor of political science at Duke University, told AFP.

But as the impact of last year’s tax cuts fade and Trump’s aggressive tariff policies bite harder, while the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, the US economy is expected to slow next year.

And Trump — who said Democrats would “take a wrecking ball to our economy” — now has two ready-made scapegoats to blame for any slowdown: the Democratic-controlled House, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who he has repeatedly attacked for raising rates.

Vanden Houten of Oxford Economics said she was not forecasting a recession by the time Trump faces reelection in 2020 but the odds were rising.

“The economy is definitely going to be more vulnerable about a year from now,” she said.

“I think by the time the presidential campaign is in full swing, it’s certainly going to be a fading expansion.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s newly renegotiated North American free trade deal — the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — is likely to come up for a vote in 2019 but Democrats are unlikely to block it. /cbb

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Hillary Clinton declares ‘moment of reckoning’

PHILADELPHIA—Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, who sacrificed personal ambition for her husband’s political career and then rose to be a globally influential figure, became the first woman to accept a major party’s presidential nomination on Thursday night (Friday morning in Manila), a prize that generations of American women have dreamed about for one of their own.

Declaring that the nation was at “a moment of reckoning,” Mrs. Clinton, 68, urged voters to reject the divisive policy ideas and combative politics of the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. She offered herself as a steady and patriotic American who would stand up for citizens of all races and creeds and unite the country to persevere against Islamic terrorists, economic troubles, and the chaos of gun violence.

“Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart, bonds of trust and respect are fraying,” said Mrs. Clinton, who worked on the speech until the early hours of Thursday morning. “And just as with our founders there are no guarantees. It truly is up to us. We have to decide whether we all will work together so we all can rise together.”

Mrs. Clinton radiated confidence, from her pungent delivery and easy laugh to the unusually expressive ways she shifted her tone and delighted in her own best lines. She smoothly acknowledged her own limitations and trust issues as a public figure and forcefully challenged Mr. Trump over his claims that he alone could fix America’s problems.

And after 25 years in a sometimes brutal national spotlight, Mrs. Clinton tried to explain who she is and what drives her—from her Methodist faith to her passion for government policy that could mean all the difference for people.

Policy wonk

“I sweat the details of policy,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Because it’s not just a detail if it’s your kid—if it’s your family. It’s a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president.”

It was one of several contrasts she drew with Mr. Trump, who has barely explained how he would carry out his policy goals. And she received help from several Republicans and military veterans who took the convention stage earlier in the evening to warn that Mr. Trump was not fit for the presidency and would take the United States to “a dark place of discord and fear,” as a retired general, John Allen, put it. Democrats in the convention hall broke out into a booming, lengthy chant of “USA, USA!”

But the most powerful guest speaker of the evening was Khizr Khan, a Muslim American whose son joined the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and was killed during service in Iraq. Mr. Khan, rebuking Mr. Trump for frequently demonizing Muslims as threats to the United States, pulled a copy of the Constitution out of his suit jacket.

“Mr. Trump, have you even read the Constitution?” he said. “You have sacrificed nothing.”

His words seemed to send a collective shiver through the convention hall, leaving some delegates in tears.

Night of history

Few recent political conventions have had a night gusting with so much history and high emotion. If elected, Mrs. Clinton would become the 45th president of the United States, as well as the first to be married to a former president, Bill Clinton, the nation’s 42nd.

She would be the latest in a long line of Yale graduates and accomplished lawyers to lead the country, but she would also be the first mother and grandmother to be commander in chief, decades after women became heads of state elsewhere.

Democrats roared with passion and pride as a beaming Mrs. Clinton took the stage after her daughter, Chelsea, introduced her as an American who was inspired by her own mother’s impoverished childhood and had faced personal and professional choices that defined generations of women. The two locked eyes and fell into a long embrace as Mrs. Clinton patted her back. A moment later, Mrs. Clinton waved at Mr. Clinton, and he blew her a kiss.

Have no fear

Then Mrs. Clinton, who has given only a few major political speeches in her life, delivered her biggest yet. She offered a positive portrait of America that felt like a different country than the nation in decline that Mr. Trump often describes and that many voters’ fear has come to pass after years of terrorism at home and abroad and the growing gap between rich and poor.

“He’s betting that the perils of today’s world will blind us to its unlimited promise,” Mrs. Clinton said. “He wants us to fear the future and fear each other. Well, a great Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than 80 years ago, during a much more perilous time:  ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”

Mrs. Clinton, facing a three-month general election campaign against an unpredictable Mr. Trump, who has risen in the polls since his convention speech last week, hoped that her remarks here would not only energize her party, but also help her connect with undecided and independent voters who are skeptical of her candidacy.

Bernie’s cause

She nodded toward the political work she still had to do. Praising her rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, she told his mostly liberal supporters—some of whom booed or staged a “silent protest” in the hall, declining to applaud her speech—“I want you to know, I’ve heard you. Your cause is our cause.”

And she acknowledged that many voters still do not relate to her after her eight years as first lady, eight as a senator, and four as secretary of state.

“The truth is, through all these years of public service, the  ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me,” she added before sharing memories of her humble roots and life lessons from church and her mother—particularly, “no one gets through life alone.”

Bashing Trump

Her strategy was to go hard at Mr. Trump, repeatedly drawing contrasts between her positions—which are in the mainstream of Democratic politics—and Mr. Trump’s unorthodox views for a Republican, such as placing tariffs on other nations’ goods and possibly withdrawing from treaties and trade deals.

Reciting a litany of unusual and unlikely ideas that Mr. Trump laid out at the Republican convention, Mrs. Clinton drew huge laugh when she said, “He spoke for 70-odd minutes—and I do mean odd.”

Mrs. Clinton, the rare first lady who, like her idol Eleanor Roosevelt, used the job to influence policy and who went on to be a powerful figure, began her own quest for the White House nearly a decade ago with her first run for the nomination against Barack Obama.

Back then she presented herself as a steely and even hawkish Democrat who held some views—opposing gay marriage, supporting free trade, and championing the rights of gun owners—that she has shifted since her defeat. This time around, she fashioned herself as “a progressive who likes to get things done”—the sort of line-straddling language that makes some liberals dubious of her values and some independents skeptical about her authenticity.

Wellesley speech

Her convention speech comes 47 years after the young Hillary Rodham wound up in Life magazine when she used her commencement address at Wellesley College to reckon with that era’s civic unrest and clashes between protesters and police officers.

Her message to the millions of people watching her speech on television on Thursday night was similar, as she implored Americans to look past fear and tumult and to choose harmony over hatred. But this time, Mrs. Clinton was to speak to an audience that is deeply distrustful of her. Some 67 percent of all voters and 74 percent of independents said they do not trust Mrs. Clinton, in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

About six weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton started sketching down rough notes about what she wanted to say on the eve she accepts her party’s nomination. A month ago, discussions with her top policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the speechwriters Dan Schwerin and Megan Rooney, began to shape the speech, with advice from a variety of friends and former speechwriters. Mrs. Clinton also sought advice from Mr. Obama’s much-admired former director of speechwriting Jon Favreau.

Falling barriers

The speech often electrified the assembled Democrats with its crowd-pleasing lines about Mr. Trump like, “Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis: A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” And the delegates reveled at the end as confetti rained down on Mrs. Clinton and she playfully swatted at the spill of balloons.

For her, though, the greatest exhilaration flowed from the sense that history had been made and that the lives of future generations would be changed forever.

“Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between. Happy for boys and men, too—because when any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. When there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.

“So let’s keep going,” she said, “until every one of the 161 million women and girls across America has the opportunity she deserves.” TVJ

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

White House rejects latest Republican offer to end shutdown

WASHINGTON - The White House rejected a Republican plan to reopen portions of the US government on Tuesday as the first shutdown in 17 years closed landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and threw hundreds of thousands of federal employees out of work.

The back and forth offered no sign that President Barack Obama and Republicans can soon end a standoff over health care that has sidelined everything from trade negotiations to medical research and raised new concerns about Congress's ability to perform its most basic duties.

The Republican plan would restore funding for national parks, veterans services, and the District of Columbia. Other government services would remain unfunded.

While the selective funding approach appeared to unite conservative and moderate Republicans for now, the White House said Obama would veto it. Democrats who control the Senate said they would reject it before it reached Obama's desk.

Republicans who control the House of Representatives said Obama could not complain about the impact of the shutdown while refusing to negotiate. "The White House position is unsustainably hypocritical," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

An even bigger battle looms in coming weeks, when Congress must raise the debt limit or risk a US default that could roil global markets.

"This is a mess. A royal screwup," said Democratic Representative Louise Slaughter of New York.

Obama accused Republicans of taking the government hostage in order to sabotage his signature health care law, the most ambitious US social program in five decades.

"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden.

Republicans in the House view the Affordable Care Act as a dangerous extension of government power and have coupled their efforts to undermine it with continued government funding. The Democratic-controlled Senate has repeatedly rejected those efforts.

Spending authority for much of the government expired at midnight on Monday (0400 GMT), but that did not prevent the Obama administration from opening on Tuesday the health-insurance exchanges that form the centerpiece of the law.

Veterans pass barricades

Republicans said their latest proposal would help elderly veterans who earlier in the day pushed past barricades at the National World War II Memorial to get into the shuttered site.

"They're coming here because they want to visit their memorial, the World War II memorial. But no, the Obama administration has put barricades around it," said Republican Representative Mike Simpson ofIdaho.

Democrats said Republicans were resorting to gimmicks to avoid a vote that would restore funding to the entire government because they were afraid it would pass.

"That's important--a park? How about the kids who need daycare?" said Democratic Representative Sander Levin of Michigan. "You have to let all the hostages go. Every single one of them."

The veterans in question had gotten in to the memorial with help from several Republican lawmakers. But they didn't seem particularly interested in taking sides.

"It's just like a bunch of little kids fighting over candy," said George, Atkinson, an 82-year-old Coast Guard veteran of the Korean War. "The whole group ought to be replaced, top man down."

The plan appeared to temporarily unite Republicans, heading off a split between Tea Party conservatives who pushed for the government funding confrontation and moderates who appear to be losing stomach for the fight.

Before a meeting of House Republicans, Representative Peter King, a New York moderate, estimated that more than 100 of the chamber's 232 Republicans would back Obama's demand to restore all government funding without conditions. That would be enough to easily pass the House with the support of the chamber's 200 Democrats.

The shutdown closed landmarks like the Grand Canyon and pared the government's spy agencies by 70 percent. In Washington, the National Zoo shut off a popular "panda cam" that allowed visitors to view its newborn panda cub online. In Pennsylvania, white supremacists had to cancel a planned rally at Gettysburg National Military Park.

Market reaction

Whether the shutdown represents another bump in the road for a Congress increasingly plagued by dysfunction or is a sign of a more alarming breakdown in the political process could be determined by the reaction among voters and on Wall Street.

Stock investors appeared to be taking the news in stride with investors confident a deal could be reached quickly. The S&P 500 closed up 0.8 percent and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.2 percent.

But the US Treasury was forced to pay the highest interest rate in about 10 months on its short-term debt as many investors avoided bonds that would be due later this month, when the government is due to exhaust its borrowing capacity.

If Congress can agree to a new funding bill soon, the shutdown would have little impact on the world's largest economy.

A week-long shutdown would slow US economic growth by about 0.3 percentage points, according to Goldman Sachs, but a longer disruption could weigh on the economy more heavily as furloughed workers scale back personal spending.

The last shutdown in 1995 and 1996 cost taxpayers $1.4 billion, according to congressional researchers.

The political crisis raised fresh concern about whether Congress can meet a crucial mid-October deadline to raise the government's $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. Some Republicans see that vote as another opportunity to undercut Obama's healthcare law.

Failure to raise the debt limit would force the country to default on its obligations, dealing a blow to the economy and sending shockwaves around global markets.

A 2011 standoff over the debt ceiling hammered consumer confidence and prompted a first-ever downgrade of the United States' credit rating.

Analysts say this time it could be worse. Lawmakers back then were fighting over how best to reduce trillion-dollar budget deficits, but this time they are at loggerheads over an issue that does not lend itself to compromise as easily: an expansion of government-supported health benefits to millions of uninsured Americans.

Republicans have voted more than 40 times to repeal or delay "Obamacare," but they failed to block the launch of its online insurance marketplaces on Tuesday. The program had a rocky start as government websites struggled to cope with heavy online traffic.

"What I'm hearing from my constituents at home is if this is the only way to stop the runaway train called the federal government, then we're willing to try it," said Texas Senator John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 24 percent of Americans would blame Republicans, while 19 percent would blame Obama or Democrats. Another 46 percent said everyone would be to blame.

The shutdown battles of the 1990s didn't substantially affect public's opinion of then-Democratic President Bill Clinton or his Republican adversaries, the Gallup polling organization said.

Republicans and Democrats traded blame for the shutdown, but many seemed deeply embarrassed for the institution as a whole.

Several said they planned to donate their salaries to charity or forego pay altogether.

"This is a black eye on our government at all levels," said Republican Representative Michael Grimm of New York. "I think it's a low point for us." — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Democrats try to build case for additional taxes

CARSON CITY — The top two Democrats in the Legislature are talking about taxes.

Indeed, as the legislative session enters week two, Democrats have held committee hearings and news conferences to have the promised discussion on taxes.

But so far, it’s come down to just that: Talk.

In a 10-minute news conference on tax reform Tuesday, Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick and Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis uttered the world “discussion” a dozen times. But they revealed little on their positions for what shape that reform might take.

Instead, the pair said they want to have a come-one, come-all data-driven discussion about what kind of state Nevada could and should be and how much taxpayers should should help pay for that vision.

Denis said the three broad objectives are to “create jobs, make education better and fix our failing revenue system.

“What we're trying to do is make the case for why we need to do what we need to do,” Denis said.

In a committee hearing later that afternoon, Democrats began building that case, taking on Gov. Brian Sandoval’s decision to extend temporary tax increases another two years and his call for a payroll tax cut.

“What I took away from this is that 75 percent of businesses don’t have skin in the game,” Assemblywoman Irene Bustamante Adams, D-Las Vegas, said during a hearing on Nevada’s payroll tax and Sandoval’s proposal to exempt another 2,883 businesses from paying it.

Republican leaders have expressed a willingness to join in the tax discussions early, and have indicated support for broadening the state’s tax base.

The goal?

“Change,” Kirkpatrick said of broadening the state’s tax structure. “Hold me to that.”

“We need to look at broadening the revenue structure in a revenue-neutral manner,” said Senate Republican leader Michael Roberson, R-Henderson. “We have a generally flat budget this session, and we’ll learn to live with that.”

All four leaders in the Legislature are new to their positions this year and have expressed an unusual desire to work together and have policy-oriented meetings.

“In the past, I don’t know that it was so open,” Kirkpatrick said.

Democrats have sprinted forward with tax hearings during the first and second week of the Legislature, but they are absent a tax plan. The choice word this week is still “discussion.”

Kirkpatrick said these conversations extend to Sandoval, a Republican, as well.

“He said we can meet on a weekly basis,” she said.

But openness doesn't necessarily mean agreement.

Although Denis wants to examine a margins tax proposal that the state teachers union hopes to pass on the ballot in 2014, Roberson said that’s a nonstarter — a position akin to that of Kirkpatrick.

“You’re not going to get a single Republican vote to support the margins tax,” Roberson said.

Sandoval has consistently said that he will not support spending beyond what he has proposed in his $6.55 billion budget. But he’s also indicated a willingness to look at a tax reform plan if one is presented to him.

“I think we do need to make the case to Sandoval,” Kirkpatrick conceded.

Democrats want at least $60 million more for public education programs than the governor, offering more schools all-day kindergarten and smaller class sizes.

They would have to find money somewhere to pay for those goals.

Kirkpatrick said data will drive the debate.

Holding a sheet of data in her hand in her office Tuesday, she said Sandoval’s proposal to exempt more businesses from the payroll tax would mean only one in four businesses would pay the tax.

“It’s harder to refute because I’ve got the facts,” she said.

Kirkpatrick and Denis also said this week they would like to talk about cementing some temporary taxes into the state’s tax structure, which would give the state more stability.

“We're not giving anybody any stability for trying to put new programs in place,” she said. “In two years, those come up, and they're now on the chopping block.

“Folks want stability and right now they don’t have any stability.”

Kirkpatrick asked Sandoval’s budget director, Jeff Mohlenkamp, what the governor plans to do with $1.2 billion in temporary taxes and diversions — almost 20 percent of total general fund spending — when the state crafts another budget two years from now.

“We don't know if the extensions will need to be extended again,” Mohlenkamp told a legislative tax committee. “We'll have to wait and see.”

source: lasvegassun.com