Senate cancels debt bill vote, progress ensues

This might be the first glimmer of real hope we've seen for weeks. From The New York Times:

After a tense day of Congressional floor fights and angry exchanges, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, called off a planned showdown vote set for after midnight, but said he would convene the Senate at noon on Sunday for a vote an hour later. He said he wanted to give the new negotiations a chance to produce a plan to raise the federal debt limit in exchange for spending cuts and the creation of a new Congressional committee that would try to assemble a long-range deficit-cutting proposal.

“There are many elements to be finalized and there is still a distance to go before an arrangement can be completed,” said Mr. Reid, who just a few hours earlier had played down talk of any agreement. “But I believe we should give everyone as much room as possible to do their work.”

Mr. Reid’s announcement set off an almost audible sigh of relief on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers and their aides had been bracing for an overnight clash over the debt following a day that had seen a heated House vote and lawmakers trudging from office to office in search of an answer to the impasse.

The first indication off a softening of the hard lines that have marked weeks of partisan wrangling over the debt limit came in the afternoon when the two leading Congressional Republicans announced that they had reopened fiscal talks with the White House and expected their last-ditch drive to produce a compromise.

Following the House’s sharp rejection of a proposal by Mr. Reid to raise the debt limit and cut spending, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and a linchpin in efforts to reach a deal, said he and Speaker John A. Boehner were “now fully engaged” in efforts with the White House to find a resolution that would tie an increase in the debt limit to spending cuts and other conditions.

“I’m confident and optimistic that we’re going to get an agreement in the very near future and resolve this crisis in the best interests of the American people,” said Mr. McConnell, who noted he was personally talking to both Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a favorite partner in past negotiations.

Despite today's theatrics, a final debt deal is (apparently) in the works. ABC News has learned the details of a "tentative deal" reached by Republicans and the White House. It would be structured as follows: (1) $2.8 trillion in a debt ceiling increase (through 2012); (2) immediate cuts of $1 trillion; (3) vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment; (4) a committee to recommend (roughly) $1.8 trillion in further cuts to match (dollar for dollar) the debt increase; and (5) a trigger mechanism to enact "across-the-board cuts," including cuts to Defense and Medicare. Let's be cautiously optimistic.

Does Congress need law clerks?

Larry Kramer says yes after a conference on the proposition in April. I question the reasoning somewhat--doesn't Congress already have hundreds of attorneys employed by committees? Still, more clerks could give Congress bright "young lawyers [who] would spend a year researching and drafting laws before moving on to other legal endeavors." In a way, new law students offer a unique perspective to the drafting process. From Law.com:

"The legal profession as such is extremely court-centered," Kramer said. "One of the reasons for that, I think, is that court clerkships are the first job out the door for many graduates of the best law schools in the country. They move on and become leaders in the profession, and it's incredible the extent to which that first job shapes their thinking and understanding about the profession."

Advocates of congressional clerkships are dreaming big, but starting small. The Daniel Webster Congressional Clerkship Act of 2011, a bill introduced in April by U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., and co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., would create a pilot program with 12 clerks. The Committee on Rules and Administration of the Senate and the House Committee on House Administration would select clerks from a centralized pool. Each chamber would get six clerks, to be divided between the parties.

The article further elaborates on the proposed pilot program:

Legislators and committee would compete for the clerks by offering the most attractive type of work. The clerks would choose where they want to spend their year.

Keeping the pilot program small will help ensure that competition for clerk spots is stiff, said Yale Law School professor Bill Eskridge, a leading authority on the legislative process. The plan will have succeeded, he said, if the congressional clerkships carry prestige equal to that accorded to federal court clerkships. The long-term plans calls for the program to expand after the pilot phase.

Supporters acknowledge that getting the bill passed during this legislative session may be difficult, given that Congress is in budget-cutting mode. The cost of the pilot program is relatively small -- about $1 million per year, with clerks earning the same salary as clerks in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia -- but the cost has been a hurdle in the past.

Senator Chuck Schumer has sponsored a sister bill in the Senate on the measure. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Don't Mess With Texas

Tom DeLay gets 3 years...

GOP to Read Constitution on House Floor

From CNN:

Republicans will have the Constitution read on the House floor Thursday morning in a nod to the conservative Tea Party freshmen that helped put them back in the majority. The reading will start at 10:30 a.m., with members taking turns until they complete the document -- a process that could take up to a couple of hours.

Story time here.

Stay on the Court, Justice Stevens

Senator Specter urges Justice Stevens to stay on the Court for the remainder of this term because he feels that the Senate will not be able to confirm a replacement this year. Washington Post

10 Reasons to Fear the Health-Care Bill

The problems according to Richard Epstein. The Daily Beast

House Subcommittee Approves College Football Playoff Legislation

We assumed it had to happen eventually. . . . From ESPN:

A House subcommittee approved legislation Wednesday aimed at forcing college football to switch to a playoff system to determine a national champion, over the objections of some lawmakers who said Congress had more pressing matters on its plate. . . . The bill, which faces long odds of becoming law, would ban the promotion of a postseason NCAA Division I football game as a national championship unless that title contest is the result of a playoff. The measure passed by voice vote in a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee, with one audible "no," from Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga.

Doubt this goes anywhere.

A Current Look at the Deficit and Proposed Tax Changes

Time for an update on our nation's deficit. As you may know, the United States' total debt is limited to a statutory ceiling set by Congress. Currently, this ceiling is $12.1 trillion. As of Friday, November 13, 2009, our nation's debt stood at $11.99 trillion. At our current rate of cash burn (something like $100 billion a month), we don't have very long before we hit the ceiling. Congress will likely increase the ceiling, albeit with some huffing and puffing from deficit hawks, because a failure to do so would constitute a default by the United States and would shut down the government (that being said, such a situation happened before in 1995).

Increasing the debt ceiling may keep the wheels of government spinning, but it does nothing to fix the underlying problem: the gargantuan chasm between spending and revenue. Recognizing this, the Obama administration is floating some interesting proposals for dealing with the epic mismatch:

1) Domestic agencies will likely face a 5 percent cut or a freeze of their budgets;

2) Excess TARP money may be used to reduce the debt (somewhat circular in that TARP is all borrowed funds to begin with);

3) The roughly $47 billion a year Medicare fraud industry will (hopefully) be attacked.

Congress is also looking at ways to "generate more revenue" (read: raise taxes) to not only reduce the deficit, but also to pay for new domestic programs such as health reform. For example, the recently passed health bill contains a 5.4 percent surtax on individuals making over $500,000 and families who make over $1,000,000. Interestingly, unlike most of our tax brackets, this surtax is not indexed for inflation. That means, essentially, that more and more people are subject to the tax as their nominal incomes increase into the area covered by the bracket--a phenomenon called bracket creep.

As currently implemented, the surtax would affect 0.3 percent of taxpayers in 2011 and due to the lack of indexing, 0.5 percent of taxpayers in 2019.

Quoting Out of Context: A Reason for Not Allowing the Broadcasting of Oral Arguments

As I was reading an op-ed in the New York Times, I recalled an earlier post written by my colleague, Nima, which discussed whether television broadcasting of Supreme Court oral arguments should be allowed. The op-ed, written by Adam Cohen, argues that the Voting Rights Act may be in jeopardy because it “has run smack into the ‘federalism’ crusade of Court’s conservative bloc.” Cohen justifies his reasoning by quoting statements made by Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia during oral arguments. Unfortunately, Cohen takes the quotes out of context so that they fit his argument, and, in the process, misleads his readers.

For instance, Cohen paints a false picture of Justice Scalia’s reasoning:

Justice Scalia even asked, “Do you ever seriously expect Congress to vote against a re-extension of the Voting Rights Act?” Apparently, the fact that there is such overwhelming support for the act is an argument for why the Supreme Court should strike it down.

Now, anyone with a legal education should know that this is not Justice Scalia’s reasoning. Even if Justice Scalia was of the opinion that Congress did not have the power to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, the popularity of the Act would not be a factor in his analysis. As a journalist with a Harvard Law degree, he obviously understands this (and, yes, Cohen is yet another Harvard Law alum not practicing law). Cohen uses the quotations only as a rhetorical device to bolster his (rather weak) argument.

Cohen’s article exemplifies the reason why oral arguments should not be broadcasted. Quoting out of context, like Cohen has done, causes the public to misconstrue the Court’s reasoning. Readers of Cohen’s article assume that Justice Scalia believes the Act should be struck down because there is “such overwhelming support.” This may inevitably lead to a loss of confidence in the Court.

If a respectable news source like the New York Times, and a journalist with a Harvard Law degree, can use these quotes out of context, just imagine what other, perhaps less respectable, sources may do (ahem, Fox News).

No Cameras, Please

Apparently there are more interesting things going on at the Supreme Court besides the magic of dishwashing machines.  The Wall Street Journal reports that, upon appearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday, "Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer said that [the] justices remain undecided on whether to allow television broadcasts of court proceedings, despite debate over the issue."

According to Justice Thomas, the justices have "discussed it and discussed it and discussed it," but have failed to reach consensus. Justice Breyer voiced concerns with broadcasting oral arguments because doing so "could detract from people's understanding of the court's functioning [as oral arguments constitute roughly only 2% of any given case]."

But, some members of Congress feel differently:

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, a member of the panel, told the justices he favored adding television coverage of the court, pointing to broadcasts of the U.S. House and Senate. "It's a very simple matter to broadcast live on the Internet," Culberson said. "There's no logical distinction between the audience in the room and the audience in the country out there."

Hopefully we'll get an answer someday.