Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Obama Budget: The key: will anything move in Congress?
The $3.8 trillion budget blueprint President Obama plans to submit to Congress on Monday calls for billions of dollars in new spending to combat persistently high unemployment and bolster a battered middle class. But it also would slash funding for hundreds of programs and raise taxes on banks and the wealthy to help rein in soaring budget deficits, according to congressional sources and others with knowledge of the document.
To put people back to work, Obama proposes to spend about $100 billion immediately on a jobs bill that would include tax cuts for small businesses, social safety net programs and aid to state and local governments. To reduce deficits, he would impose new fees on some of the nation's largest banks and permit a range of tax cuts to expire for families earning more than $250,000 a year, in addition to freezing non-security spending for three years.
Despite those efforts, the White House expects the annual gap between spending and revenue to approach a record $1.6 trillion this year as the government continues to dig out from the worst recession in more than a generation, according to congressional sources. The red ink would recede to $1.3 trillion in 2011, but remain persistently high for years to come under Obama's policies.
…The 2011 blueprint repeats many of Obama's grandest ambitions from his first budget, including an expensive overhaul of the nation's health care system, a dramatic expansion of the federal student loan program and far-reaching climate change legislation, congressional sources said. But with Obama's standing in the polls badly damaged by a bruising yearlong battle over health care, all three of those initiatives are stalled in Congress with no clear path forward.
The budget is also expected to revive a series of tax increases from last year, including a cap on the value of itemized deductions for families earning more than $250,000 a year and higher income taxes for hedge fund managers. But those ideas, too, have gone nowhere in Congress and may be even less appealing in an election year. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013101377.html?hpid=topnews
Health Care Bill: The work had been completed on 1/19, and was ready for Obama, but was history as of 1/20. Republican stalling paid off.
[Tom] Harkin (D-Iowa), who attended healthcare talks at the White House, said negotiators were on the cusp of bringing a bill back for final votes in the Senate and House.
Harkin said "we had an agreement, with the House, the White House and the Senate. We sent it to [the Congressional Budget Office] to get scored and then Tuesday happened and we didn't get it back." He said negotiators had an agreement in hand on Friday, Jan. 15.
Harkin made clear that negotiators had reached a final deal on the entire bill, not just the excise plans, which had been reported the previous day, Jan. 14.
Harkin said the deal covered the prescription-drug "donut hole," the level of federal insurance subsidies, national insurance exchanges and federal Medicaid assistance to states. http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/78889-harkin-health-deal-was-reached-days-before-browns-victory
Afghanistan: Hanging with the Taliban: More negotiations, plans to get out by finding Taliban to ally with.
Taliban commanders held secret exploratory talks with a United Nations special envoy this month to discuss peace terms, it emerged tonight.
Regional commanders on the Taliban's leadership council, the Quetta Shura, sought a meeting with the UN special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and it took place in Dubai on 8 January. "They requested a meeting to talk about talks. They want protection, to be able to come out in public. They don't want to vanish into places like Bagram," the Reuters news agency quoted a UN official as saying, referring to the Bagram detention centre at a US military base outside Kabul.
The Dubai meeting was confirmed to the Guardian by officials with knowledge of the encounter, but they said they could provide no further details.
It was the first such meeting between the UN and senior members of the Taliban. The fact that it took place suggests that peace talks have revived since exploratory contacts between emissaries of the Kabul government and the Taliban in Saudi Arabia last year broke down.
It also suggests that some Taliban members might be prepared for the first time to put faith in an international organisation to broker a deal to end the nine-year war. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/28/taliban-united-nations-afghanistan
A conference on Afghanistan which only a week ago was seen as the political stunt of an enfeebled British government could now mark the beginning of the end of the war in Afghanistan. The 60-nation meeting in London on Thursday has been preceded by an unexpected groundswell of support, including from top military commanders, for an eventual political settlement with the Taliban. "There seems to be an emerging consensus that when all is said and done, the Afghan jihadist movement - in one form or another - will be part of the government in Kabul," U.S. think tank Stratfor said.
…Only last March, President Barack Obama talked of an "uncompromising core of the Taliban" which must be defeated.
But facing dwindling public support for a war now into its ninth year and economic problems at home, Washington and its allies have been scaling back their ambitions for Afghanistan. "They have defined success as the absence of a Taliban revolution," said Steve Coll at the New America Foundation. "That is an achievable goal."
…"Both sides have similar perceptions that neither side can fully win," said Antonio Giustozzi, a London School of Economics researcher on the Taliban. "It is exactly at this point of equilibrium that negotiations become possible." http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60Q3IW20100127
Expanding the Military’s Responsibilities: Space added to an ongoing presence in the Middle East for the “near and mid-term future.” Sounds like a minimum of 75,000 troops in Afghanistan on election day, 2012.
The US will take on a broader range of military responsibilities, including defending space and cyberspace, in spite of growing pressure on budgets, a long-awaited administration report is set to conclude on Monday.
Robert Gates, US defence secretary, is due to unveil the Obama administration’s Quadrennial Defense Review, which shifts emphasis from the post-cold war doctrine that the US is able to fight two “major regional conflicts” at one time.
According to a December draft, the US military will restructure its forces to “prevail in today’s wars” and buy more of the helicopters and unmanned drones that have proved their worth in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the draft also highlights “a multiplicity of threats”, including cyberattacks and anti-satellite weapons, as well as terrorist groups and the prospect of more nuclear weapon states.
“It is no longer appropriate to speak of ‘major regional conflicts’ as the sole or even the primary template for sizing, shaping and evaluating US forces,” the draft says. “Rather, US forces must be prepared to conduct a wide variety of missions under a range of different circumstances.”
In an apparent nod to Iran, it says that within the next decade the US’s adversaries could include “regional powers armed with modest numbers of nuclear weapons, as well as larger more powerful states”. Despite President Barack Obama’s emphasis on beginning a drawdown in Afghanistan in July 2011, the draft also envisages 75,000 US troops will remain in the country for the “near and mid-term future”. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ff81a32-0e94-11df-bd79-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Tensions with China: Since 1949- a familiar script, as the U.S. pushes back after China has a fit over our sending new weapons to Taiwan.
For the past year, China has adopted an increasingly muscular position toward the United States, berating American officials for the global economic crisis, stage-managing President Obama’s visit to China in November, refusing to back a tougher climate change agreement in Copenhagen and standing fast against American demands for tough new Security Council sanctions against Iran.
Now, the Obama administration has started to push back. In announcing an arms sales package to Taiwan worth $6 billion on Friday, the United States leveled a direct strike at the heart of the most sensitive diplomatic issue between the two countries since America affirmed the “one China” policy in 1972.
The arms package was doubly infuriating to Beijing coming so soon after the Bush administration announced a similar arms package for Taiwan in 2008, and right as tensions were easing somewhat in Beijing and Taipei’s own relations. China’s immediate, and outraged, reaction — cancellation of some military exchanges and announcement of punitive sanctions against American companies — demonstrates, China experts said, that Beijing is feeling a little burned, particularly because the Taiwan arms announcement came on the same day that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly berated China for not taking a stronger position on holding Iran accountable for its nuclear program. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/asia/01china.html?ref=global-home
China as Green Leader: As Obama warned in the SOTU…
China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.
China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.
These efforts to dominate the global manufacture of renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.
“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.
President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
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