"Orthogonal to reality"

Jared Bernstein summarizes the 2016 House Republican budget about as pithily as possible.

Here's a look at President Obama's proposal.
The New York Times compares the GOP and Obama budgets. Note that they accept the assumptions implicit in both documents. For how strong those assumptions are, see Bernstein's comments -- the GOP budget is full of magical thinking and assumptions about how their tax cuts will magically transform into lower deficits.

And finally, here's an outline of the Congressional Progressive Caucus' "People's budget", which won't go anywhere because it's not Very Serious or something.

Senate confirmation update -- Obama getting more appointments through

Later today, the Senate is going to vote to confirm Michelle T. Friedland to be a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court. You can read up on her here – she’s pretty darn impressive in both competence and politics. 

Oh, and by the way, the Senate will also appoint David Weill as the administrator of the Wages and Hours Division for the Department of Labor, you know, the people who stop low-wage workers from getting ripped off by their employers.

You probably haven’t read much of anything about either nomination. These appointments seem entirely unremarkable and ordinary. Frankly, they should be, it’s a routine part of making government function. And in the post-filibuster world, routine nominations, judicial and otherwise actually seem to be proceeding fairly smoothly for the first time in five years.

During the first four months of 2014, the Senate has confirmed 20 judicial nominations – the most of any of the first four months of any calendar year of the Obama administration. On average, Majority Leader Harry Reid seems to be confirming either one appeal court nominee or four district judges per week the Senate has been in session this year.

Things aren’t perfect.  In some cases Republicans are still blocking qualified nominees in committee through the blue slip system– like North Carolina’s Jennifer Prescod May-Parker. In other cases, Republicans aren’t providing any input on nominees at all – like in Texas while the state’s federal bench languishes, as Houston's ever-handy Charles Kuffner has pointed out. And in some cases, they are driving a hard line – insisting on having Obama nominate a large number of their nominees in exchange for seating a few of his, like in the Northern District of Georgia -- a deal that has irked the state's civil rights community. 

Even the Friedland nomination should have been voted on before the Senate left town for the Easter recess on April 10, but Republicans insisted upon using their allotted 15 hours of debate to slow down the nomination (though none of them actually planned to debate).

However, overall the nominees are both flowing in a more orderly manner through the confirmation process.  There are currently 50 judicial nominations awaiting action in the Senate (eight appeals and 42 district). Thirty-one of those have moved through the judiciary committee and are awaiting final confirmation.

Among those 31 include several  nominees from Arizona and South Carolina, who had been languishing for months in committee.

Once those are confirmed (hopefully by August) that will leave Obama with 50 appellate appointments and 214 district appointments – roughly on track to match George W. Bush’s total number of appointments.

Overall then, move to end the filibuster for most executive appointments seems to have been a good one.

Post-nuclear Senate update: Pillard confirmed; more confirmations on the way

In a majority rule Senate, apparently a bit of Chai is enough to keep everyone working all night.

The "Chai" in question just happens to be Chai Rachel Feldblum, President Obama's long-stalled nominee for reappointment to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

As I write this, she's not stalled any more.

On Wednesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked for unanimous consent  to waive the post-cloture debate time on District Cornelia Pillard's nomination (which would have expired at 1 a.m. today) and invoke cloture on Feldblum, with confirmation votes to follow early this morning. As a result, every one could go home and get some sleep.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley objected.

So Reid kept the Senate in session all night.

This appears to be the equivalent of assigning Senate Republicans an eight-hour detention.

 Democrats confirmed Pillard at 1 a.m. by a vote of 51-44 and invoked cloture on Feldblum, 57-39.

After Feldblum gets confirmed for the EEOC this morning, the next up are four district court judges for the districts of Western New York, New Hampshire, and Montana (which has two vacancies). The appointments for New York and Montana will fill three judicial emergencies.

For those keeping score at home, that's two Circuit-Court judges, one chair of the Federal Housing Administration and one EEOC member. Incidentally, that's also three more well-qualified women and one more well-qualified African American in powerful positions in federal government. But who's counting?

This majority rule thing is kind of refreshing.

From Consent to Advice -- other possible avenues to block judges in the Senate

Yesterday, we all crawled out from our radiation shelters to behold the charred remains of the Senate landscape. You see, Harry "Major Kong" Reid engaged the nuclear option last Thursday, blowing up chamber procedure and changing to require only a majority vote to end debate on executive and non-Supreme Court judicial nominations.

So now what? Over the short term, the confirmations should flow fairly quickly. There are currently four appeals (including the three D.C. circuit nominees) and 13 district court nominations that have passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee and are awaiting floor action. They should fly through in a jiffy in December.

Behind that immediate flurry, the picture gets a bit murkier. There are currently 93 vacancies on the federal bench --  18 on the appellate level and 75 at the district level. Getting the 17 easy confirmations out of the way leaves 76 slots (14 appellate and 62 district). Of these Obama has nominees for six appellate and 30 district vacancies.

There are two ways Republicans can slow down or block nominations to these vacant slots.

Obamacare moderate emerges from the Louisiana jungle, but why?

Sam Knight, a smart guy who occasionally holds down the Washington Monthly's  Political Animal Blog for the weekend, notes some interesting election results in a Louisiana Congressional election on Saturday. Republican candidate Vance McAllister easily defeated fellow Republican Ned Riser, who was backed by tea-party groups, 59.6 percent to 40.4 percent

Knight argues that the election shows that the tea party is losing sway in its scorched-earth war against the Affordable Care Act, as McAllister suggested that he wanted to work with Democrats to improve the law, and hinted that these stances may show a recognition among GOP voters of the reality of Obamacare. Riser had the backing of other establishment Republican groups as well, while McAllister self-financed his campaign and earned a celebrity endorsement from Duck Dynasty reality-TV star Phil Robertson.

I hope Knight is right, but I suspect that there are some funky electoral dynamics at work here that may explain McAllister's stances.

Louisiana uses a two-stage "jungle primary" system in which a wide number of candidates jump into the first round, and if none win a majority, the top two candidates advance to a run-off. Riser finished first in the primary with 32 percent of the vote, while McAllister had 17.9 percent. (primary results here)

McAllister had more ground to make-up, but he had several avenues to get it:

1. He could try to pick up the votes from the other GOP candidates who got knocked out of the run off, whose support made up 18.2 percent of the votes.

2. He could try to pick up support from voters who supported the Democratic candidates -- none of whom made the run-off, who collectively collected 29.9 percent of the votes.

The math looks pretty obvious here. McAllister can probably keep his primary supporters, pick up at least a sliver of other supporters from eliminated GOP candidates and grab almost all the Democratic voters by running conservative on most issues (God and guns in this case) while speaking some sense on the side about health care.

He was able to increase his vote total by 36,000, while Riser only increased his by 3,800. Turnout only decreased from 21.2 percent to 18.3 percent of registered voters, so my theory at least seems plausible. (Since the results from the run-off aren't official, we don't know official turn out figures from partisans in either party. In any case, in this part of Louisiana those numbers are only marginally useful for our analysis, as Democrats still outnumber the GOP, but often tend to vote for Republicans in large numbers.)

I read this as a short-term tactical move to attract moderate and a few liberal voters in a two-way general election who liked the opportunity to keep a pure tea-partier out of office. Notice how as a federal office holder, he'll have no say in whether Louisiana will expand Medicaid, essentially making his election position a no-cost proposition. He'll have plenty of time to establish his hard-right credentials over a year in Congress during which he'll get to vote "no" on lots of things. Next year as an incumbent, he can run on that record and discard the Democratic part of his coalition.

Finally, as a self-funder, he's not as dependent on either tea-party or other GOP party organizations to put together a campaign, so he might be able afford to drift a bit from party orthodoxy on one issue. 

Incidentally, the Christian Science Monitor article that Knight cites hints at this dynamic as well, though Knight doesn't go into it:

Riser and McAllister largely agreed on many issues. Both opposed abortion, favor strong gun rights and criticize the levels of federal spending and debt.
Their sharpest distinction rested with President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

Both opposed the health overhaul, but Riser wanted only repeal, saying the law will harm businesses and families and can't be fixed.

McAllister said repeal had no chance with Democrats leading the Senate and White House, so he said Congress should work to improve the law. He also wants Louisiana to expand its Medicaid program to give insurance to the working poor, an expansion that Riser opposed.

The positions put McAllister at odds with some tea party supporters but generated support from Democrats who had no candidate of their own in the runoff.

(Italics mine)

Again, I'd love to be wrong here, but I think my theory is just as plausible as Knight's with the data we have.

The more general question is what sort of impact the "jungle primary" has on results, but I don't know too much of the political science on it -- though France has had essentially the same system for years with some odd results from time to time.

Millett and Watt confirmations imminent?

I just checked up on the Senate Executive Nominations Calendar, and the following two names appear on the first page:

UNANIMOUS CONSENT AGREEMENTS 

Melvin L. Watt (Cal. No. 209)

Ordered, That with respect to the vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Melvin L. Watt, of North Carolina, to be Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency for a term of five years, the mandatory quorum required under Rule XXII be waived.

(October 28, 2013.)

Patricia Ann Millett (Cal. No. 327)

Ordered, That with respect to the vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Patricia Ann Millett, of Virginia, to be United States Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit, the mandatory quorum required under Rule XXII be waived.

(October 28, 2013)

(Rule XXII is what gives the minority its filibuster power) 

Both Watt and Millett have been the subject of attacks from Republicans who want to block a more active Federal Housing Agency (which has been without a permanent head for years) and keep the President from placing any more nominees on the D.C Circuit Court. 

The DC Circuit is considered the second-most important court in the country, because it has jurisdiction over all federal agencies and its Conservative appointees have slowed or blocked the ability of federal agencies to protect worker rights, increase oversight on banks and other financial institutions, and protect the environment.

Millett is probably the least controversial of the three appointees for the D.C. Circuit Court, while Nina Pollard is the most controversial (she is known for her strong feminist views and record on Civil Rights; apparently believing in gender equality and civil rights is controversial nowadays)

I wonder if a deal has gone down trading Millett, Watt, Obama's other D.C. Circuit nominee Robert Wilkens, and Tom Wheeler as FCC chair in exchange for Pollard withdrawing her candidacy. I'd hate to lose Pollard's candidacy, but if Obama gets to name another appointee of his choice, it's win-win-win for the Democrats. 

I'm also wondering if Harry Reid has 51 votes to end the filibuster, at least for certain types of judicial nominees. That would explain the GOP's sudden move to surrender on two nominees that they hate a lot.

Either way, if this is true, it is good news for sane public policy.

(Note: please feel free to tell me if I'm misreading the Sen. Executive calendar -- it's entirely possible, though I tried to do my homework here.)  

(UPDATE:  10/31: And Watt just got filibustered. Looks like I was wrong. Nuts.)

GOP Stupid shutdown statement contest II: Red-River rivalry edition

So we’re back with our second edition of "stupid shutdown statements"

It’s a big football weekend in the south central states and Texas and Oklahoma face off in their annual rivalry game in Dallas. Frankly, as a Big-10 partisan, I don’t trust all these new-fangled things the Big-12 is using, like the spread offense and the forward pass, both of which I'm certain were inspired by Communists. I also resent Nebraska dragging down my favored conference's collective GPA since it joined in 2011.

Still, the Red River Rivalry is kind of important, so I thought it would be nice to showcase the verbal ineptitude of several of our fine congressional representatives from the great states of Texas and Oklahoma.

Follow me below the fold as the GOP statesmen bring the (economic) pain:

Stupid statement contest: Texas congressional delegation division

I like to write more about public policy and political science than politicians saying silly things. But living in Texas not only forces you to live with terrible public policy, but a lot of terrible officials saying terrible things to advocate for terrible public policy. To avoid going out of your mind, you just have to point derisively and mock them sometimes. One of the silver linings of having to move to Texas is that there are a lot of people to laugh at (Everything is bigger here, including the class of twit political representatives.)

Incidentally, Molly Ivins (rest her Lone-Star-swilling soul) parlayed that silver lining into a very successful career.

So follow me below the fold for this week’s six contestants for the stupidest thing said by a member of Texas’ GOP congressional delegation this week.