Senate leaders announce bipartisan agreement to avert government shutdown

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., speaks with reporters Sept. 13 on Capitol Hill.

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Paul Kane and Rosalind S. Helderman

Sep. 27 2011

Senate leaders agreed to a deal Monday evening that is almost certain to avert a federal government shutdown, a prospect that had unexpectedly arisen when congressional leaders deadlocked over disaster relief funding.

After days of brinkmanship reminiscent of the budget battles that have consumed Washington this year, key senators clinched a compromise that would provide less money for disaster relief than Democrats sought but would also strip away spending cuts that Republicans demanded. The pact, which the Senate approved 79 to 12 and the House is expected to ratify next week, is expected to keep federal agencies open until Nov. 18.

“It will be a win for everyone,” said Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the plan “a reasonable way to keep the government operational.”

Aides to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he will support the compromise.

The spending battle marked the third time this year that congressional acrimony has brought the government to the edge of calamity. In April, Boehner and President Obama reached a deal on funding for 2011 about 90 minutes before a government shutdown was to begin. On Aug. 2, just hours before the deadline, Congress gave final approval to legislation lifting the government’s borrowing authority, averting a partial shutdown and the potential for a default on the federal debt.

Although this week’s fight ended with days, rather than hours, to spare, it drained many in Congress, who thought it was a senseless fight. Reid summed up the feeling of many lawmakers when he quoted Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who said there was too little money in dispute to raise the specter of a shutdown and to halt payments to those affected by natural disasters.

“Let’s fight when there’s something to fight about,” Reid quoted Isakson as saying during a speech on the Senate floor.

At issue was a dispute over how to fund disaster relief, a concern that was heightened in late August after an earthquake struck central Virginia and Hurricane Irene caused flooding in the Northeast.

Although Democrats said the Federal Emergency Management Agency needed more funding, they agreed to accept a Republican plan to spend $3.65 billion in disaster relief money, $1 billion of which would have gone toward the budget for the current fiscal year, which will end Friday. Republicans, concerned about adding to the budget deficit, refused to support the funding without $1.6 billion in accompanying cuts. Their largest target was an auto loan program popular with Democrats, leading to the standoff.

The showdown between the two sides was averted on Monday, when FEMA said it could make ends meet through the end of the week. That led to an agreement that calls for the agency and other government disaster relief programs to forgo the $1 billion in proposed funding for this week. Beginning Saturday and running to Nov. 18, FEMA can begin to tap the remaining $2.65 billion for ongoing efforts.

With the House out of session this week, the Senate approved a resolution that will keep the government open through next Tuesday. The House is expected to approve that extension in a voice vote Thursday, which does not require all members to be present, and then approve the longer-term bill next Tuesday.

Some lawmakers from hard-hit states are unhappy with the compromise, saying that it would result in a slight delay in processing aid to victims, and that the overall total of FEMA funding wouldn’t be enough to account for the damage caused by the disasters.

“They would delay the process by punting back to the House,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). The deal “also stripped $1 billion in disaster relief and provides less emergency funding for Missourians in the wake of record flooding and tornadoes,” he added.

The debate over the budget bill turned on sharp — and familiar — political lines that scuttled earlier talk that the two parties were going to tone down their attacks.

Republicans, particularly House conservatives, said they were unwilling to add to the federal deficit, even for disaster funding, and accused Democrats of overspending. Democrats used the debate to portray Republicans as “holding hostage” relief checks for those struck by tornadoes, flooding, forest fires and droughts, focusing much of their criticism on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R), who represents Mineral, Va., the epicenter of the earthquake.

Although the agreement lifts the imminent specter of a government shutdown, it will not resolve the fight over how much FEMA needs to help disaster victims and whether that money must be offset with spending cuts.

The White House has said FEMA will need $4.6 billion for the next fiscal year — a figure many Democrats say underestimates the agency’s needs.

Democrats will push to fully fund FEMA’s request and perhaps broaden it during negotiations over spending for the rest of the year, but they were split Monday over what the compromise would mean for future funding battles.

“This is a very big and important move. It says we met each other halfway. We saved the jobs,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), referring to the the auto loan program. “We figured out a way to fund FEMA that was acceptable to them. It’s a template. We have to figure out how to meet each other halfway here.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), whose state was hit hard by flooding from Hurricane Irene, said the deal would solve the disaster issue — but only temporarily.

“I’m concerned about the fact that we give blank checks to Iraq and [Afghanistan] and we don’t want to take care of America for Americans,” he said. “It’s wrong, it’s foolish and it will come back to haunt us.”

Senate rejects House spending bill, leaving open possibility of government shutdown

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Felicia Sonmez, Rosalind S. Helderman and Paul Kane

Sep. 23 2011


The Senate on Friday defeated, 59 to 36, a GOP-authored short-term funding measure designed to keep the government running through mid-November, ratcheting up the pressure on party leaders to resolve an impasse on federal disaster relief funds ahead of a deadline at the end of next week.

With both chambers scheduled to begin a week-long recess later Friday, the next step on the funding resolution remains unclear. The Federal Emergency Management Agency could run out of funding as early as Monday, and the resolution currently keeping the federal government open is set to expire on Sept. 30.

At a Capitol news conference ahead of the Friday morning vote, House Republican leaders urged the Senate to take up the House-passed measure.

“With FEMA expected to run out of disaster funding as soon as Monday, the only path to getting assistance into the hands of American families immediately is for the Senate to approve the House bill,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.

Hours earlier, the House had approved its version of the legislation by a 219-203 vote in an after-midnight roll call. But Democrats in both chambers have balked at the inclusion of more than $1 billion in cuts elsewhere in the budget in order to offset the additional disaster relief funding.

The vote in the upper chamber came after a midnight roll call, when House Republican leaders persuaded conservatives early Friday morning to support a stop-gap measure nearly identical to one they had rejected just 30 hours earlier. By a narrow margin, 213 Republicans supported the plan, along with six Democrats; 179 Democrats opposed it, joined by 24 Republicans.

Without a resolution, FEMA’s disaster relief fund will run out of money early next week and the rest of the government would be forced to shutdown Oct. 1.

FEMA said its Disaster Relief Fund had just $175 million as of Friday morning and would go broke by early next week, likely on Tuesday.

An unprecedented depletion of the fund would trigger federal laws governing how agencies are supposed to operate in the absence of funds, and the agency said it is consulting with Obama administration lawyers to determine how to proceed.

“The administration is committed to doing all it can under current legal authorities to continue vital operations, including assistance to individuals,” FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen said in an e-mail. “ But there is no question this is a critical situation and one we are watching closely.”

House leaders contend that the Senate is responsible for blocking desperately needed disaster dollars from flowing to FEMA.

“You saw the House act,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) as he left the Capitol early Friday morning. “We are intending that the money gets to FEMA and to disaster victims as they need it.”

“I think Harry Reid’s political ploy is not going to work,” Cantor continued. “I guess Harry Reid will have to bear the burden of denying disaster victims the money they need.”

Friday’s House vote marked a reversal of fortunes for Boehner, who after losing the initial Wednesday vote on the House spending resolution found himself roaming the contours of a familiar dilemma — capitulate to fiscal hawks in his own party who want to spend less, or compromise with Democrats who want to spend more.

Instead, Boehner found another route: He huddled all day and night Thursday with his rank-and-file, warning them he would give them one more chance to approve the bill or he would be forced to agree to drop the offsetting cut, as Democrats had demanded.

In addition, after a 90-minute meeting with the House GOP Conference on Thursday afternoon, the leadership agreed to an additional, largely symbolic cut by striking $100 million from a loan program that funded the bankrupt solar panel manufacturerSolyndra. That company, which received the loan guarantees through the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus legislation, has become a favorite target for Republicans in their critique of the White House’s handling of the economy.

As for the swipe at the program that had funded Solyndra, Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) told colleagues on the House floor late Thursday that the goal was to “ensure that hard-earned dollars of the American people are not wasted in the way that we have seen” with the company.

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) countered that the measure had hardly changed after a day of wrangling and still made “unacceptable cuts to an essential manufacturing jobs program to pay for equally essential disaster relief.”

The blow-up over what Boehner had once hoped would be a routine matter — a bill to merely keep government operating until Nov. 18 — illustrated what has become a central reality for the Republican speaker: He controls the House majority only on paper.

On any given vote, he must contend with a sizable bloc of his own members willing to buck his leadership in the name of shrinking government.

This leaves him in the uncomfortable position of having to consider alliances with Democrats — and facing negotiating those alliances from a position of weakness.

Despite the embarrassing loss on Wednesday’s vote, Republicans defended the decision to hold the vote even though they realized it was likely to fail. The GOP leadership wanted to demonstrate to the recalcitrant conservatives that their actions had real consequences. One senior Republican adviser called the process “an educational experience.”

“I’ve always believed in allowing the House to work its will. I understood what the risk was yesterday. But why not put the bill on the floor and let the members speak? And they did,” Boehner said Thursday morning at his weekly press briefing.

According to GOP lawmakers and aides, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had reported to Boehner and Cantor that a few dozen Republicans would oppose the legislation, mostly because they thought its spending levels were too far above those they voted for in the spring when they approved the 2012 budget originally proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Boehner’s leadership team knew that it would need Democratic votes to approve the plan, but only by Wednesday afternoon did they fully understand that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) were whipping their caucus to oppose the measure and make Boehner deliver nearly all Republican votes for passage. Rather than pulling the bill from the floor, Boehner told his deputies to hold the vote.

The extraordinary effort required to pass such a basic bill suggests even bigger battles later in the fall on potential blockbuster deficit-reduction plans.

The stopgap spending bill is necessary because the House and Senate have stalemated over how to fund government through the whole year. Without a stopgap in place to buy time for further negotiations, the government will shut down at month’s end.

House leaders had hoped to pass the short-term funding bill without the strife that had characterized recent debates, which they knew would erode financial markets’ confidence and spark further disgust among voters. They would do it by agreeing to set spending in the bill at a rate of $1.043 trillion for the year, the amount set in the rancorous August deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

But that plan ran headlong into the political realities of their divided chamber — as well as a congressional calendar that provides for a week-long recess starting Friday so that Jewish lawmakers can observe their holidays next week.

Democrats, stung by accusations that they had made too many concessions in the debt fight during the summer, stood unified against the measure over a Republican decision to pair $3.65 billion in funding for disaster relief with a $1.5 billion spending cut to the the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program, which offers loans to car companies to encourage the production of energy-efficient cars. That particular cut was anathema to many Democrats, who argued that the loan program has generated tens of thousands of jobs.

Democrats relished the prospect that their unified opposition forced Boehner to publicly struggle.

“In the House, the majority controls all the mechanisms,” said Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.). “You’d better be able to produce the votes. You just cant go willy-nilly to the floor and then say, ‘Well, oopsy.’ ”

Disasters in US: An extreme and exhausting year

Πηγή: indialocals
By Seth Borenstein
Sep 3, 2011


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nature is pummeling the United States this year with extremes.

Unprecedented triple-digit heat and devastating drought. Deadly tornadoes leveling towns. Massive rivers overflowing. A billion-dollar blizzard. And now, unusual hurricane-caused flooding in Vermont.

If what's falling from the sky isn't enough, the ground shook in places that normally seem stable: Colorado and the entire East Coast. On Friday, a strong quake triggered brief tsunami warnings in Alaska. Arizona and New Mexico have broken records for wildfires.

Total weather losses top $35 billion, and that's not counting Hurricane Irene, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. There have been more than 700 U.S. disaster and weather deaths, most from the tornado outbreaks this spring.

Last year, the world seemed to go wild with natural disasters in the deadliest year in a generation. But 2010 was bad globally, and the United States mostly was spared.

This year, while there have been devastating events elsewhere, such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Australia's flooding and a drought in Africa, it's our turn to get smacked. Repeatedly.

"I'm hoping for a break. I'm tired of working this hard. This is ridiculous," said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who runs Weather Underground, a meteorology service that tracks strange and extreme weather. "I'm not used to seeing all these extremes all at once in one year."

The U.S. has had a record 10 weather catastrophes costing more than a billion dollars: five separate tornado outbreaks, two different major river floods in the Upper Midwest and the Mississippi River, drought in the Southwest and a blizzard that crippled the Midwest and Northeast, and Irene.

What's happening, say experts, is mostly random chance or bad luck. But there is something more to it, many of them say. Man-made global warming is increasing the odds of getting a bad roll of the dice.

Sometimes the luck seemed downright freakish.

The East Coast got a double-whammy in one week with a magnitude 5.8 earthquake followed by a drenching from Irene. If one place felt more besieged than others, it was tiny Mineral, Va., the epicenter of the quake, where Louisa County Fire Lt. Floyd Richard stared at the darkening sky before Irene and said, "What did WE do to Mother Nature to come through here like this."

There are still four months to go, including September, the busiest month of the hurricane season. The Gulf Coast expected a soaking this weekend from Tropical Storm Lee and forecasters were watching Hurricane Katia slogging west in the Atlantic.

The insurance company Munich Re calculated that in the first six months of the year there have been 98 natural disasters in the United States, about double the average of the 1990s.

Even before Irene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was on pace to obliterate the record for declared disasters issued by state, reflecting both the geographic breadth and frequency of America's problem-plagued year.

"If you weren't in a drought, you were drowning is what it came down to," Masters said.

Add to that, oppressive and unrelenting heat. Tens of thousands of daily weather records have been broken or tied and nearly 1,000 all-time records set, with most of them heat or rain related:

- Oklahoma set a record for hottest month ever in any state with July.

- Fairbanks, Alaska, hit 97 degrees on July 11, a record.

- Houston had a record string of 24 days in August with the thermometer over 100 degrees.

- Newark, N.J., set a record with 108 degrees, topping the old mark by 3 degrees.

Tornadoes this year hit medium-sized cities such as Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. The outbreaks affected 21 states, including unusual deadly twisters in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

"I think this year has really been extraordinary in terms of natural catastrophes," said Andreas Schrast, head of catastrophic perils for Swiss Re, another big insurer.

One of the most noticeable and troubling weather extremes was the record-high nighttime temperatures, said Tom Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. That shows that the country wasn't cooling off at all at night, which both the human body and crops need.

"These events are abnormal," Karl said. "But it's part of an ongoing trend we've seen since 1980."

Individual weather disasters so far can't be directly attributed to global warming, but it is a factor in the magnitude and the string of many of the extremes, Karl and other climate scientists say.

While the hurricanes and tornado outbreaks don't seem to have any clear climate change connection, the heat wave and drought do, said NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt.

This year, there's been a Pacific Ocean climate phenomenon that changes weather patterns worldwide known as La Nina, the flip side to El Nino. La Ninas normally trigger certain extremes such as flooding in Australia and drought in Texas. But global warming has taken those events and amplified them from bad to record levels, said climate scientist Jerry Meehl at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Judith Curry of Georgia Tech disagreed, saying that while humans are changing the climate, these extremes have happened before, pointing to the 1950s.

"Sometimes it seems as if we have weather amnesia," she said.

Another factor is that people are building bigger homes and living in more vulnerable places such as coastal regions, said Swiss Re's Schrast. Worldwide insured losses from disasters in the first three months this year are more than any entire year on record except for 2005, when Hurricane Katrina struck, Schrast said.

Unlike last year, when many of the disasters were in poor countries such as Haiti and Pakistan, this year's catastrophes have struck richer areas, including Australia, Japan and the United States.

The problem is so big that insurers, emergency managers, public officials and academics from around the world are gathering Wednesday in Washington for a special three-day National Academy of Sciences summit to figure out how to better understand and manage extreme events.

The idea is that these events keep happening, and with global warming they should occur more often, so society has to learn to adapt, said former astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA's deputy chief.

Sullivan, a scientist, said launching into space gave her a unique perspective on Earth's "extraordinary scale and power and both extraordinary elegance and finesse."

"We are part of it. We do affect it," Sullivan said. "But it surely affects us on a daily basis - sometimes with very powerful punches."