Bev Perdue Won't Seek Re-election! Her Decision Will Help Obama!

Good News for Obama From N.C.: Dem Gov. Declines to Run in ’12


North Carolina Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue will not seek re-election in 2012, a Democratic source confirmed to ABC News.

That decision should improve President Obama’s chances in the state next November, as Perdue is deeply unpopular, and that unpopularity could have hurt the president — and Democrats in general – in North Carolina in 2012.

Perdue will make the announcement this afternoon. The North Carolina Democratic Party would not confirm whether Perdue had declined to run, only that an announcement would be made Thursday.

In April, an Elon University poll showed that Perdue’s approval ratings had sagged behind Obama’s in the state. Perdue’s disapproval rating was 52 percent, while her approval rating was 33 percent.

Obama, meanwhile, enjoyed a 48 percent job-approval rating and a 46 percent disapproval rating in North Carolina. While reliable polls have been hard to come by in North Carolina, since April a string of automated phone surveys have corroborated Perdue’s unpopularity.

Obama carried North Carolina in 2008, 50 percent to 49 percent for Sen. John McCain. Democrats made significant gains in North Carolina in 2006, and, along with Obama’s victory in Virginia in 2008, North Carolina gave the party hope of an expanded electoral map and newfound competitiveness in the South.

Obama’s campaign has said it would focus its efforts again on North Carolina in 2012.

“We put the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., in part because we believe so deeply in this map,” campaign manager Jim Messina said in a YouTube fundraising video that laid out Obama’s potential electoral strategyin late December.

Had Perdue remained in office, she could have dampened the campaign efforts of President Obama, who would presumably have campaigned alongside Perdue and shared the stage with her at North Carolina events.

Perdue’s tenure saw a series of bad headlines and political disasters that sullied her image after she won the race to the governor’s mansion in 2008.

In September, she caused a stir by suggesting that the United States suspend its congressional elections for two years. In November, three of her aides were indicted for allegedly violating state election law in a scheme to pay a staff member $32,000 for work that was kept off the books.

This month, House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., launched an inquiry into whether Perdue breached government protocol by alluding to new unemployment numbers in a speech before their scheduled release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The top Republican candidate to replace Perdue is Pat McRory, who ran against Perdue and lost in 2008. Democrats do not yet have a leading candidate to step into the race, although Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton and Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx appear to be likely contenders.



Bev Perdue will not seek re-election

First-term North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue will not seek re-election, she announced Thursday.

Saddled with low poll ratings, Perdue, a Democrat, was the most endangered incumbent governor of the cycle and faced grim prospects in the fall against Republican Pat McCrory, a former Charlotte mayor who is expected to formally launch his bid in the coming weeks.

“I have spent my tenure in office — and, in fact, my adult lifetime — fighting for things that I care deeply about. And as anyone who knows me will tell you, I do not back down from tough fights,” Perdue said in a statement.

“But I understand this:
We live in highly partisan times, where some people seem more worried about scoring political points than working together to address the real challenges our state faces. And it is clear to me that my race for reelection will only further politicize the fight to adequately fund our schools.

A reelection campaign in this already divisive environment will make it more difficult to find any bipartisan solutions.”

The announcement resets what’s expected to be a vigorously fought open-seat contest in a state that will host the Democratic National Convention and could be crucial to President Obama’s re-election.

Democrats had been fretting for months about Perdue’s prospects but sources indicated Thursday that the governor came to the decision herself and was not forced out by leaders in Washington or Raleigh.

“She’s a very pragmatic woman. The scenario always was, If the polling didn’t turn around, she’d reconsider,” said a Democratic source close to the process. “She saw the writing on the wall and knew that it would be a very tough year ahead.”
Tough is an understatement.

Recent public polling found Perdue trailing McCrory by 10 points and her approval rating mired in the 30s. She had also been plagued by scandal. In November, three of her former 2008 campaign aides were indicted on obstruction of justice charges following a grand jury investigation that found a staffer was allowed to work off the books.

Her campaign also faced self-inflicted wounds when she suggested in September that congressional elections be suspended for two years, and in May when her son took to Facebook to accuse a McCrory fundraiser of adultery.

Most recently, she issued a picked a fight with the GOP-lead General Assembly through a string of vetoes and proposed a new sales tax to fund education.
Following Perdue’s announcement, which is scheduled for Thursday afternoon, Democrats will swiftly turn to finding a replacement.

Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton and Attorney General Roy Cooper have been floated as potential contenders, but Democrats believe no matter who becomes the nominee they’ll ultimately be in stronger position to hold this critical governorship.

“For the last two years Republicans have made this race about Bev Perdue because that’s all they had. Starting today it’s going to be all about Pat McCrory, a failed mayor, an unsuccessful candidate for governor,”said a Democratic source.

Republicans signaled they won’t allow the eventual candidate to carve out any distance from Perdue.

“As governor, Bev Perdue continues to set the Democrat agenda in Raleigh, which now includes a massive, job-crushing sales tax hike. No matter how hard they try, whoever emerges as the Democratic Party’s successor to Bev Perdue won’t be able to run from the Democrats’ record of higher taxes and disappointing job losses,” said Republican Governors Association Executive Director Phil Cox.


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Sources: ABC News, CNN, Fox News, Politico, WRAL, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama vs. Democrats: His "American JOBS Act"! They Need To Stick With Him!

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White House seeks to reassure Senate Democrats on jobs plan

The White House sought to reassure nervous Democrats about President Obama’s $447 billion jobs package Thursday, sending senior officials to brief the party’s Senate caucus about the proposal.

Afterward, lawmakers, administration officials and others present said the huddle went better than expected, given the resistance some Democrats have shown to the plan, and Tuesday’s losses in House special elections after GOP candidates won with anti-Obama campaigns.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the member of the Democratic leadership who has most frequently jousted with the White House, complimented senior Obama officials for taking 100 minutes of questions from the Senate Democrats.

“It was informative, we’re on the same page, we’re on the same team,” Schumer said. He acknowledged that senators “brought up their concerns” with the proposal but said they exited the meeting “unified.”

Senators heard presentations at a closed door briefing from Gene Sperling and senior advisor David Plouffe, who outlined the key points of the package of targeted tax cuts and infrastructure spending, members said.

“I think the key thing is we’re off to a great start in terms of getting excitement for the American Jobs Act,” Plouffe told reporters afterward. “The vast majority of our party is committed to showing that we’re going to act on jobs.”

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) called the meeting “very positive.”

“It was going through the package and the need for the package,” he said.

Even as Obama has been delivering a series of campaign-style speeches in support of his proposal, calling on the public to pressure Congress to pass the bill, some Democrats in Washington have been expressing reservations with the package.

Liberal members have fretted over the president’s proposal to cut the payroll tax, fearful of diverting money from the Social Security Trust fund. They say more direct government spending on infrastructure and salaries is needed to get the economy moving.

“I have been very unequivocal,” Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) told reporters Wednesday. “No more tax cuts. We have the economy that tax cuts gave us. And it’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it?”

Some conservative Democrats have said they support the tax cuts, but oppose spending billions on teacher salaries and to build schools and roads, as the president has proposed, when Congress is working to reduce the deficit.

“If spending money could fix our jobs problem, it would have been solved long ago — because we’ve sure done our share of spending,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a frequent critic of the president.

Obama’s suggestions for how to pay for the package have not been universally popular with Democrats either.

Democrats have previously rejected proposals from the White House to limit tax deductions to those making more than $250,000 a year. Opposition has not faded now that Obama has advanced the idea again to pay for the bulk of jobs plan.

“We’ve had mixed signals from the White House about the willingness to break apart the package. But I think for sure the pay-for has to be considered separately from the merits of the bill itself,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connnolly (D-Va.), who represents a wealthy Northern Virginia district and has long opposed such proposals.

Republicans spent Thursday gleefully pointing to the voices of Democratic dissent as a sign that the president’s bill does not have support of even his own party.

But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) insisted Thursday that the criticism is minor. She noted that Democrats joined on the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday to rally in support of the measure.

“There may be somebody that’s told you or spoken out about this, but our caucus is very unified in support of the American Jobs Act and the fact that it is paid for,” she said. “They may differ with some of provisions within it or the paid fors, but they do not differ in the fact that we must get behind it, we must pass it.”


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Democrats' Weak Leadership Turn Blue States Red

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Dems' Blues: States Reverting To Red


The electoral map candidate Barack Obama remade in 2008 appears to be retreating into its familiar patterns.

Obama broke the decisive role Ohio and Florida seemed to play in presidential elections, by moving from trench warfare engagement in the two states to a broader battlefield on which Republicans were placed on the defensive in states they'd once taken for granted. And his victories in places where Democrats had fared poorly in recent elections — Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, the interior West —seemed to validate his strategists' claims that he had consigned the red state-blue state presidential dichotomy to the bookstore remainders bin.

But now some of the same unlikely states that Obama put in his party's column 15 months ago feature Senate, House and governor's races with Democratic candidates in grave danger of losing in what is quickly shaping up to be a toxic election cycle.

While off-year and down-ballot elections are inherently different than presidential contests, the rapid reversal in Democratic fortunes in the very places where Obama's success brought so much attention suggests that predictions of a lasting realignment were premature.

And it's raising the question of whether the president's 2008 win was the result of a unique set of circumstances that will be difficult for him to replicate again and perhaps downright impossible for other Democrats on the ballot to reprise.

"They had wind at their back," said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and a student of national politics, of Obama's historic victory. "People were hungry for change and the president was running against a 72-year-old guy who couldn't use a computer."

But, Davis added: "One election doesn't make realignment."

At the very least, it seems that Obama's success proved that those conservative-leaning states must be viewed as highly competitive for both parties—a departure from an electoral past in which they were assumed to be GOP locks.

"They were red but they're competitive now," said Democratic National Committee Chairman and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.

In Indiana and Virginia, perhaps Obama's most sought-after prizes and two states that had not supported a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964, Republicans are taking aim at a number of junior House Democrats who were either elected or re-elected for the first time in part by riding the Obama wave. Already in Virginia, the GOP swept the three statewide offices last November. And in Indiana, the stunning retirement of well-funded Sen. Evan Bayh has forced Democrats to scramble to find a replacement candidate.

Kaine didn't bother masking his disappointment in Bayh's decision, something that has infuriated top Democrats.

"We weren't happy to hear it," he said. And while the party chairman said he was confident they could find a top-tier Democrat to run for the seat, he allowed that, "The best chance we would've had to win that seat was if Sen. Bayh was running for a third term."

Other Democrats close to Obama say that 2008 did not represent a realignment but nor was it a one-off, where Democrats flourished because of a perfect political storm.

"These states are now competitive but will tilt one way or another depending on the climate," said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and the president's former communications director. "Now that doesn't mean that we can't elect a Democratic senator in Indiana but it's going to be tough."

Dunn, though, did make the case that their task would be made easier if former Sen. Dan Coats gets the nomination, noting his lobbyist background and out-of-state residence.

In Virginia, where as many as five House Democrats could face difficult races in November, Kaine noted that the political tectonic plates had been moving toward the Democrats in recent years and described Obama's success there as the capstone of the state's shift.

But he quickly added that the lesson was not that it had suddenly become a Democratic stronghold.

"It's that neither party is going to take Virginia for granted for the next 25 years," Kaine said. "These other states are in a similar spot."

In North Carolina, which hadn't gone for a Democratic president since 1976, hopes that first-term Republican Sen. Richard Burr could be defeated have waned and Gov. Bev Perdue and Sen. Kay Hagan, two Democrats elected on Obama's coattails, have approval ratings hovering around 30 percent.

"There aren't many Obamas," said Gary Pearce, a longtime Tar Heel State Democratic consultant. "He's not on the ballot and I don't know that [his appeal] transmits. He created an energy and enthusiasm that's really rare in politics."

In Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina, Democrats fret that the absence of Obama on the ticket will ensure that fewer young and African-American voters will come to the polls--that the very "surge voters" that propelled the president could ensure defeat for the party by staying home this fall.

"Obama is still fairly strong here--a lot better than anybody else in public life," added Pearce. "What's changed is the Democrats are in charge now and they're getting blamed for the economy being bad."

Democrats may have been the most optimistic about the political shift in the Mountain West, where demographics--a rising Hispanic population and a flood of California transplants--had pushed voters away from the GOP.

But Democrats' 2008 gains are now under siege, and the region is a central battleground this year, from the Senate seat of the embattled Majority Leader, Harry Reid, on down. Three of the most vulnerable House freshmen Democrats are Nevada's Dina Titus, New Mexico's Harry Teague, and Colorado's Betsy Markey. Democrats are at risk of losing both the Senate and governor's races in Nevada and Colorado, the latter of which was ground zero for the Rocky Mountain realignment, and a state that Obama had effectively locked up with a massive early voting turnout effort.

"I don't think it was ever a massive shift - I think it was an anomaly that came in good part because of the extraordinary financial effort that went into the voter registration," said Sig Rogich, a Republican consultant and veteran observer of Nevada politics who supports Reid.

A dismal economy in Nevada, in particular, which ranks at the top of the nation in home foreclosures and is second in unemployment, has slowed the demographic trend--immigration--behind the Democratic rise.

"We've lost a good number of those who helped to change the numbers--with the job losses and so forth," Rogich said.

The economy has also left local voters, perhaps even more deeply than elsewhere in the country, angry and eager for change.

"Even if you have a job you're worried about it. Almost everybody knows either family or friends who have lost their jobs and same with people who have lost homes," said D. Taylor, the president of the Culinary Workers Union, which represents casino workers and backed Obama to the hilt in 2008. "It's general angst about no quick answers which we as Americans aren't used to."

And out West, the same cultural libertarianism and suspicion of authority that helped push big-spending and moralistic Republicans from office is now rebounding against Democrats. The unaffiliated voters who have taken flight from the Democratic Party in the three recent statewide races across the nation are an even larger force in the electorates of states like Colorado.

"The argument that Obama moves too fast, too much, too expensive has been very effective here," said Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based pollster.

The extent of Republican resurgence in the West won't be clear, however, until November, and Democrats are still competitive in races ranging from Reid's Senate seat to the open contest for the Colorado governorship, for which their candidate is the popular Denver mayor, John Hickenlooper.

And there are Democratic bright spots that suggest, Colorado political consultant Mike Stratton said, that the West could resist a national wave. New Mexico Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish is a strong candidate for the governorship. Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, a Republican, is campaigning for re-election despite profound unpopularity and stiff primary opposition.

Democrats continue to put stock in voter registration numbers that, they hope, Obama changed for good.

"When you look at Washoe County, I don think that's ever going to go back to being Republican," said state Assemblyman Richard Segerblom, a Democrat, referring to the conservative-leaning population center of northern Nevada. "That was Republican for all our lives."

To get those voters out this year, however, will be a challenge, party strategists acknowledge.

"Democrats who are running in 2010 need to give all those new voters a reason to turn out for them, they need to feel like there is something really at stake," said Dunn. "Be clear about what you're doing and why you're doing it and who you're fighting for."

Kaine pointed out, hopefully, that, "Nine months is a long time on politics. If the economy continues to improve, and we've seen signs it is, and we have action on healthcare, the dynamic is not going to be easy but we can do quite well."


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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Google Maps

A Call For Rahm Emanuel's Resignation From Liberals & Conservatives!

Congresswoman Maxine Waters slams White House Chief of Staff and Blue Dogs Congressional group founder, Rahm Emanuel.






Unlikely Allies Want Rahm Out!


There are few stranger political bedfellows than Conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and Liberal blogger Jane Hamsher. But the two joined forces on Wednesday to call for the resignation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, in a letter they penned to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The duo contends that Emanuel’s service on the board of the government-sponsored mortgage company Freddie Mac from 2000 to 2001 may have given him some knowledge of alleged financial irregularities at the time.

Norquist and Hamsher say in a letter to Holder that “stonewalling by Mr. Emanuel and the White House” leave them “no redress” other than to call for his resignation. Norquist is the head of the Conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, and Hamsher is the publisher of the liberal blog Firedoglake.

In a press release, Norquist said, "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be transparent. There is only one reason that Rahm Emanuel and others have fought to keep how they handled billions of dollars of other people's money hidden from public scrutiny; they are hiding corruption.

What would they have us believe they are hiding? Their unexpected business acumen?"

Said Hamsher in the same release, “This administration is pushing for an $800 billion bailout while the organization has no Inspector General or basic oversight, a bullish tactic Emanuel seems to favor while his activities with Freddie Mac are questioned by investigative reporters.”

In the letter to Holder, the two activists noted:

“A 2003 report by Freddie Mac's regulator indicated that Freddie Mac executives had informed the board of their intention to misstate the earnings to insure their own bonuses during the time Mr. Emanuel was a director. But the White House refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from the Chicago Tribune for those board minutes on the grounds that Freddie Mac was a 'commercial' entity, even though it was wholly owned by the government at the time the request was made.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.






Rahm Emanuel's Profitable Stint At Mortgage Giant


Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago's Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

As gatekeeper to Obama, Emanuel now plays a critical role in addressing the nation's mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration's pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world.

Emanuel's Freddie Mac involvement has been a prominent point on his political résumé, and his healthy payday from the firm has been no secret either. What is less known, however, is how little he apparently did for his money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and Wall Street that have fueled the nation's current economic mess.

Though just 49, Emanuel is a veteran Democratic strategist and fundraiser who served three terms in the U.S. House after helping elect Mayor Richard Daley and former President Bill Clinton. The Freddie Mac money was a small piece of the $16 million he made in a three-year interlude as an investment banker a decade ago.

In business as in politics, Emanuel has cultivated an aggressive, take-charge reputation that made him rich and propelled his rise to the front of the national stage. But buried deep in corporate and government documents on the Freddie Mac scandal is a little-known and very different story involving Emanuel.

He was named to the Freddie Mac board in February 2000 by Clinton, whom Emanuel had served as White House political director and vocal defender during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals.

The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most fellow directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the board's working committees, according to company proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other new directors qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records indicate.

On Emanuel's watch, the board was told by executives of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize profits the government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass.

The accounting scandal wasn't the only one that brewed during Emanuel's tenure.

During his brief time on the board, the company hatched a plan to enhance its political muscle. That scheme, also reviewed by the board, led to a record $3.8 million fine from the Federal Election Commission for illegally using corporate resources to host fundraisers for politicians. Emanuel was the beneficiary of one of those parties after he left the board and ran in 2002 for a seat in Congress from the North Side of Chicago.

The board was throttled for its acquiescence to the accounting manipulation in a 2003 report by Armando Falcon Jr., head of a federal oversight agency for Freddie Mac. The scandal forced Freddie Mac to restate $5 billion in earnings and pay $585 million in fines and legal settlements. It also foreshadowed even harder times at the firm.

Many of those same risky investment practices tied to the accounting scandal eventually brought the firm to the brink of insolvency and led to its seizure last year by the Bush administration, which pledged to inject up to $100 billion in new capital to keep the firm afloat. The Obama administration has doubled that commitment.

Freddie Mac reported recently that it lost $50 billion in 2008. It so far has tapped $14 billion of the government's guarantee and said it soon will need an additional $30 billion to keep operating.

Like its larger government-chartered cousin Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac was created by Congress to promote home ownership, though both are private corporations with shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The two firms hold stakes in half the nation's residential mortgages.

Because of Freddie Mac's federal charter, the board in Emanuel's day was a hybrid of directors elected by shareholders and those appointed by the president.

In his final year in office, Clinton tapped three close pals: Emanuel, Washington lobbyist and golfing partner James Free, and Harold Ickes, a former White House aide instrumental in securing the election of Hillary Clinton to the U.S. Senate. Free's appointment was good for four months, and Ickes' only three months.

Falcon, director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, found that presidential appointees played no "meaningful role" in overseeing the company and recommended that their positions be eliminated.

John Coffee, a law professor and expert on corporate governance at Columbia University, said the financial crisis at Freddie Mac was years in the making and fueled by chronically weak oversight by the firm's directors. The presence of presidential appointees on the board didn't help, he added.

"You know there was a patronage system and these people were only going to serve a short time," Coffee said. "That's why [they] get the stock upfront."

Financial disclosure statements that are required of U.S. House members show Emanuel made at least $320,000 from his time at Freddie Mac. Two years after leaving the firm, Emanuel reported an additional sale of Freddie Mac stock worth between $100,001 and $250,000. The document did not detail whether he profited from the sale.

Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for Emanuel, said there was no conflict between his stint at Freddie Mac and Obama's vow to restore confidence in financial institutions and the executives who run them. At the same time, Feinberg said Emanuel now agrees that presidential appointees to the Freddie Mac board "are unnecessary and don't have long enough terms to make a difference."

Former President George W. Bush voluntarily stopped making such appointments following Falcon's assessment of their uselessness.

In an interview, Falcon said the Freddie Mac board did most of its work in committees. Yet proxy statements that detailed committee assignments showed none for Emanuel, Free or Ickes during the time they served in 2000 or 2001. Most other directors carried two committee assignments each.

Contrary to the proxy statements, Feinberg said she believed that Emanuel served on board committees that oversaw Freddie Mac's investment strategies and mortgage purchase activities. But Feinberg acknowledged she had no official documents to back up that assertion.

The Obama administration rejected a Tribune request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel's time as a director. The documents, obtained by Falcon for his investigation, were "commercial information" exempt from disclosure, according to a lawyer for the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Emanuel's board term expired in May 2001, and soon after he launched his Democratic congressional bid.

One of Emanuel's fellow directors at Freddie Mac was Neil Hartigan, the former Illinois attorney general. Hartigan said Emanuel's primary contribution was explaining to others on the board how to play the levers of power.

He was respected on the board for his understanding of "the dynamics of the legislative process and the executive branch at senior levels," Hartigan recalled. "I wouldn't say he was outspoken. What he was, was solid."

By the time Emanuel joined Freddie Mac, the company had begun to loosen lending standards and buy riskier sub-prime loans. It was a practice that later blew up and contributed to the current foreclosure crisis.

In his investigation, Falcon concluded that the board of directors on which Emanuel sat was so pliant that Freddie Mac's managers easily were able to massage company ledgers. They manipulated bookkeeping to smooth out volatility, perpetuating Freddie Mac's industry reputation as "Steady Freddie," a reliable producer of earnings growth. Wall Street liked what it saw, Freddie Mac's stock value soared and top executives collected their bonuses.

Another focus of Freddie during Emanuel's day—and one that played to his skill set—was a stepped-up effort to combat congressional demands for more regulation.

During a September 2000 board meeting—midway through Emanuel's 14-month term—Freddie Mac lobbyist R. Mitchell Delk laid out a strategy titled "Political Risk Management" aimed at influencing lawmakers and blunting pressure in Congress for more regulation. Through Delk's initiative, Freddie Mac sponsored more than 80 fundraisers that raised at least $1.7 million for congressional candidates despite a federal law that bans corporations from direct political activity.

Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg said Emanuel "can't remember the meeting or topic" but might have been in attendance when Delk outlined his plans. Feinberg downplayed the significance of the fundraiser thrown for Emanuel, which brought in $7,000, stressing that it was but one of many hosted by Delk. The event stood out in at least one respect, however.

The Freddie Mac-linked events were mostly for Republicans, and only a handful benefited Democrats like Emanuel. "Rahm was a good friend of mine. He was on Freddie Mac's board. He was very much supportive of housing," said Delk, who resigned under pressure in 2004.

Then-Freddie Mac CEO Leland Brendsel also hosted a fundraising lunch for Emanuel's 2002 campaign that netted $9,500 from top company executives. Brendsel was later ousted in the accounting scandal.

Federal campaign records show that Emanuel received $25,000 from donors with ties to Freddie Mac in the 2002 campaign cycle, more than twice the amount collected that election by any other candidate for the U.S. House or Senate.

Emanuel joined the House in January 2003 and was named to the Financial Services Committee, where he also sat on the subcommittee that directly oversaw Freddie Mac. A few months later, Freddie Mac Chief Executive Officer Leland Brendsel was forced out, and the committee and subcommittee launched hearings to sort out the mess, spanning more than a year. Emanuel skipped every hearing, congressional records indicate.

Feinberg said Emanuel recused himself "from deliberations related to Freddie Mac to avoid even the appearance of favoritism, impropriety or a conflict of interest."



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Sources: Politico, Chicago Tribune, Fire Dog Lake, Americans For Tax Reform, MSNBC, Huffington Post, AP, House.gov, Youtube, Google Maps

GOP's Top Brass Persuading Other Congressional Dems To Switch...Decision 2010

McCain, GOP Secretly Courting Another Dem To Switch


Republicans are stepping up their efforts to persuade more House Democrats to switch parties and are zeroing in on a second-term Pennsylvanian who is not ruling out such a move.

Democratic Rep. Chris Carney received a phone call Wednesday from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asking him to consider becoming a Republican, a top GOP official told POLITICO.

A spokesman for Carney declined to say if the congressman was considering such a switch.

“No further comment at this time,” said Carney spokesman Josh Drobnyk, who would only confirm that the call took place.

In a brief interview, McCain declined to offer details about the conversation.

“I just said, ‘Whatever you do, I know that you’ll make the right decision for the country,’” said the Arizonan.

A source familiar with the call said that Republicans thought Carney might be susceptible to McCain’s entreaty because, like the senator, the 50-year-old House member served in the Navy .

McCain’s call to Carney comes one day after freshman Alabama Democrat Parker Griffith announced that he was uncomfortable with his party’s direction and was becoming a Republican.

That House Republicans would deploy their party’s 2008 presidential standard-bearer to reach out to Carney underscores the sense of opportunity the GOP feels with the Griffith switch, along with polls showing voters turning sharply away from Democratic policies. So party officials are moving quickly to capitalize on the trend with other Democrats from conservative-leaning districts in hopes of creating a snowball effect.

“Politics is a momentum sport,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

A senior Republican said that the Senate GOP is expected to receive a list of party-switching targets.

But persuading colleagues to change sides is a delicate matter, often handled at the member level and with great discretion. The hope is to bag the quarry without being seen or heard trying to do so.

A top House Republican aide, wanting to avoid revealing a poaching patrol, downplayed the effort.

“You’ve got to have a willing partner; you don’t just hunt these guys down,” said the Republican. “They have to nudge you first.”

But the aide acknowledged that they had gotten “a nibble” from Carney and were now making the pitch that he’d be better off switching parties than running again as a Democrat in a northeastern Pennsylvania seat that President Obama lost by 9 percentage points last year.

Rep. Bill Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican, is taking the lead on the effort to persuade his colleague to switch, said a GOP aide.

Carney, who is still a Commander in the Navy Reserve, represents a rural swath of northeastern Pennsylvania that was historically represented by Republicans, including such prominent figures as William Scranton and Joseph McDade.

But Carney knocked off scandal-plagued former GOP Rep. Don Sherwood in 2006 to capture the seat in the same year Democrats retook the congressional majority.

Before Carney’s upset win, Republicans held the seat for nearly four decades.

Carney hadn’t drawn a leading GOP opponent so far this year, but Republicans had been recruiting former U.S. Attorney Tom Marino to run for the seat. Marino met with the National Republican Congressional Committee last week, according to a GOP source.

Another leading candidate, state Rep. Mike Peifer, abruptly decided not to run against Carney this week.

“My family comes first,” Peifer told the Pike County Press. “We decided together that I would not run.”

Peifer did not respond to a phone call from POLITICO seeking comment.

Despite being a top GOP target and running in a district that McCain easily carried, Carney comfortably won re-election last year, taking 56 percent of the vote.

And in his two terms in the House, Carney, a Blue Dog, has been a fairly reliable leadership vote. He supported the stimulus earlier this year and recently provided a key vote on health care and financial regulation legislation — all bills that some of his conservative Democratic colleagues opposed.

Not all Conservative Democrats are up for grabs, though.

With Griffith’s announcement Tuesday, eyes immediately turned to his home state freshman counterpart, Rep. Bobby Bright.

But Bright told the House Democratic leadership Tuesday night that he planned to stay in the party, according to a senior Democratic aide.

Similarly, Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho), another freshman Blue Dog who would be a prime target, indicated in a statement to POLITICO that he won’t switch.

“I will remain as Independent as Idaho, I will not be switching parties, and I will win in November,” Minnick said in the statement.



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Sources: Politico, Google Maps

Health Care Bill Passage Another Political Win For Pres. Obama...Decision 2010

Health care reform will be an Obama victory. When Senate health care legislation finally passes, it will be a win for the president.

However for Congressional Democrats facing re-election in 2010, it won't be a reciprocal victory.

NBC’s David Gregory offers analysis.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sources: MSNBC

Barack Obama's Presidential Legacy: Can He Save It?

Hillary Was Right


Maybe Barack Obama really wasn’t ready to be President, and he better figure out what he’s doing before it’s too late.


As the first year of the Obama era draws to a close, the president is losing the battle for America's hearts and minds. It's hard not to feel some sympathy for him, given the disastrous state of the economy when he took office and the many smoldering international crises that keep flaring up. President Obama's predecessors deserve plenty of blame for his woes—as Obama and his advisers never tire of reminding us. But their not-so-subtle digs at President George W. Bush paper over their own unforced errors.

The most glaring and consequential unforced error came in how the Obama administration framed the health-care reform debate. The mantra of "bending the cost curve" was tailor-made for conservative and moderate intellectuals who preach the gospel of entitlement reform. If passing health-care reform were fundamentally about winning over the think tanks, the green-eyeshade approach might have made sense. But of course the real goal was to overcome the fear of the large majority of Americans who are insured and who deeply, desperately, and sometimes irrationally oppose anything that would change the status quo. A large number of those Americans are elderly Medicare recipients, and they vote in large numbers.




Voters over 65 were largely immune to the Obama magic during the campaign, and the prospect of trimming Medicare to help finance coverage expansion didn't sit well. My guess is that President Obama figured emphasizing cost cutting would help bring a handful of Republicans to the table. Yet he failed to reckon with the fact that politicians of all stripes will abandon ideological commitments on a matter of political survival. So-called small-government conservatives in the House spent the Bush years fighting for federal spending directed at projects in their own districts.

When elderly voters started calling in about the threat to Medicare, virtually all congressional Republicans simultaneously discovered that protecting Medicare from spending cuts was a bedrock principle of true Americanism. Again, one can complain about Republican hypocrisy, but it's easy to imagine Democratic incumbents engaging in similar ideological acrobatics to gain an advantage.

Not foreseeing this outcome was a serious lapse in judgment that very nearly derailed President Obama's entire domestic agenda—and it still could. More to the point, the Republican revival all but guarantees that the White House will have to rely on not-so-reliable Blue Dogs. Right now, Democrats can cut deals without leaning too heavily on moderate and conservative Democrats from the South and West. But if they lose 20 or more seats next year, that won't be an option. That means goodbye cap-and-trade and a lot more.

The other big unforced error was over Afghanistan, where the President made the very bad decision to freeze out Hamid Karzai early in his term. This move deepened Karzai's paranoia, which led to the ballot-stuffing that made Afghanistan's 2009 elections a sham. There is no doubt that Afghanistan was going south well before President Obama came on the scene, and it is clear that he's dedicated to turning the situation around. Yet he made matters worse during the crucial early months of this year.




It is the unforced errors that raise the question of whether Hillary Clinton was right back in 2008 when she argued that the White House was no place for "on-the-job training." At the time, Clinton's stinging attacks on Obama's relative inexperience infuriated the insurgent candidate's supporters, who damned the Clinton machine for its savage bullying.




Yet there was an obvious truth behind Clinton's rhetoric. As a major player during her husband's administration, she had an opportunity to learn from the amateurish mistakes made during the Clinton White House, including a callous disregard for key congressional allies and the country's moderate-to-conservative temperament on contentious social issues.

More to the point, the army of ex-Clinton staffers were the ones who wouldn't need on-the-job training. They already knew how to staff bureaucracies and how to make government work. Even now, a number of critical administration jobs remain unfilled. Republican opposition has something to do with this, but overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress make this excuse more than a little unconvincing.

The saving grace of the Obama administration so far has been the willingness of Clinton-era insiders like Gene Sperling and Leon Panetta and Clinton herself to join the fold.

The almost completely unheralded Sperling has played a vital role at the Treasury Department, where he serves as Tim Geithner's right-hand man—an impressive sacrifice of personal ego for someone who had every right to expect a top-tier job. Perhaps the most important Clinton veteran serving President Obama is Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, whose kneecap-busting ruthlessness makes him one of the few Democrats that Republicans truly fear.

To be sure, it's not obvious that Rahm's reign of terror is an entirely good thing. We don't know exactly why Greg Craig, the now-former White House counsel, was essentially ousted from office, but well-founded rumors suggest that he was the victim of a Rahmian plot that has left a bad taste in the mouth of the more idealistic liberals serving in the administration.

The good news for the Obama White House is that there is plenty of time for a comeback, and the Republican opposition has an extremely steep hill to climb. This week was a very strong one for the president.

His jobs speech demonstrated that he is flexible enough to shift gears when necessary. And his Nobel address was a masterful defense of America's role as the guarantor of global peace and stability. It was a speech any president would have been proud to give, and it's one that Democrats and Republicans have already applauded. So it is certainly possible that President Obama is finally getting the hang of the most difficult job in the world. The question is whether or not it's too late.



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Sources: The Daily Beast, Black Agenda Report, Youtube, Google Maps

Moderate Dems Skeptical About Newly Proposed Medicare Plan

Moderates Democrats uneasy with Medicare plan


Senate moderates who are the linchpin to passing a health care reform bill raised fresh worries Thursday about a proposed Medicare expansion, complicating Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hopes of putting together a filibuster-proof majority for the legislation in the coming days.

Two days ago, the Medicare proposal appeared to be the elusive bridge between liberals, who were being forced to give up a public health insurance option, and moderates, who said they couldn’t vote for a bill that included one.

But by Thursday, the shine had dimmed, as senators grew restless over a lack of information and declined to commit their votes until they could review the legislative language and the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate. Republicans also stepped up their criticism of the plan.

The three moderates — Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), whose votes could make or break health reform this year — expressed varying degrees of resistance to the Medicare idea.

Snowe said the Medicare expansion exacerbates an “already-serious problem,” with the low government reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals that serve Medicare patients. It could force her to vote no, she said.

Lieberman indicated that he was growing “increasingly concerned” about the proposal.

And Nelson said allowing people ages 55 to 64 to purchase Medicare coverage could simply be an intermediate step on the way to an entirely government-run health care system — “which I do not like.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing does not become a viable option,” Nelson said. “I think it is going to be the lesser of the popular things, but I am keeping an open mind.”

On the floor, Republican senators waved around a scathing editorial from The Washington Post, reading the headline several times throughout the day: “Medicare sausage? The emerging buy-in proposal could have unintended consequences.”

They seized upon one sentence in particular — that the proposal “is a far more dramatic step toward a single-payer system than lawmakers on either side realize.”

“I’m very puzzled ideas like this are being cooked up behind closed doors two weeks before Christmas, and we don’t know what they are,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

Reid will not release details — even to senators — until he receives the CBO analysis, which isn’t expected until early next week. At that point, Reid has less than two weeks to tweak the plan if the price tag is too high, brief his caucus, lock down the votes and clear a series of procedural hurdles for final passage.

The Medicare buy-in proposal has been kicked around policy circles for years, but it has been absent from the current health care debate. Democrats had become intimately familiar with the ins and outs, benefits and ramifications of the public option because it was all anybody talked about for the past year.

Senate moderates who are the linchpin to passing a health care reform bill raised fresh worries Thursday about a proposed Medicare expansion, complicating Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hopes of putting together a filibuster-proof majority for the legislation in the coming days.

Two days ago, the Medicare proposal appeared to be the elusive bridge between liberals, who were being forced to give up a public health insurance option, and moderates, who said they couldn’t vote for a bill that included one.

But by Thursday, the shine had dimmed, as senators grew restless over a lack of information and declined to commit their votes until they could review the legislative language and the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate. Republicans also stepped up their criticism of the plan.

The three moderates — Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), whose votes could make or break health reform this year — expressed varying degrees of resistance to the Medicare idea.

Snowe said the Medicare expansion exacerbates an “already-serious problem,” with the low government reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals that serve Medicare patients. It could force her to vote no, she said.

Lieberman indicated that he was growing “increasingly concerned” about the proposal.

And Nelson said allowing people ages 55 to 64 to purchase Medicare coverage could simply be an intermediate step on the way to an entirely government-run health care system — “which I do not like.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing does not become a viable option,” Nelson said. “I think it is going to be the lesser of the popular things, but I am keeping an open mind.”

On the floor, Republican senators waved around a scathing editorial from The Washington Post, reading the headline several times throughout the day: “Medicare sausage? The emerging buy-in proposal could have unintended consequences.”

They seized upon one sentence in particular — that the proposal “is a far more dramatic step toward a single-payer system than lawmakers on either side realize.”

“I’m very puzzled ideas like this are being cooked up behind closed doors two weeks before Christmas, and we don’t know what they are,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

Reid will not release details — even to senators — until he receives the CBO analysis, which isn’t expected until early next week. At that point, Reid has less than two weeks to tweak the plan if the price tag is too high, brief his caucus, lock down the votes and clear a series of procedural hurdles for final passage.

The Medicare buy-in proposal has been kicked around policy circles for years, but it has been absent from the current health care debate. Democrats had become intimately familiar with the ins and outs, benefits and ramifications of the public option because it was all anybody talked about for the past year.


Sources: Politico

House Rejects Expanded Mortgage Help In Wall Street Reform Bill

House kills Bankruptcy Mortgage relief in Wall Street bill


The House has rejected an effort to expand a Wall Street regulation bill with mortgage relief that would let debt-ridden homeowners reduce their payments in bankruptcy court. The vote was 241-188 to reject.

The provision would have revived a previous bill that passed the House but later failed in the Senate.

Democrats hoped that by inserting the provision in the regulatory legislation they would have had another opportunity to make it law. Aiding homeowners through bankruptcy had been a key feature of President Barack Obama's foreclosure fighting proposal, but the president did not push for it.

Banks and credit unions have lobbied against the bankruptcy measure. They say it would force a flood of bankruptcy filings and ultimately drive up mortgage rates.




House approves Financial Reform bill



A little over a year after Congress bailed out the financial system, the House on Friday passed a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial architecture and the rules that govern it, seeking to prevent a repeat of last year’s meltdown.

Friday’s 223-to-202 vote was a major victory for the Obama administration, which has made Wall Street reform a policy and political imperative, second only to health care on its agenda. But like so much of the White House’s other legislative agenda, this too, was a partisan win, as not a single Republican voted for the bill.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) aggressively made the case for Republicans to oppose the bill, and in the end all of them did. In addition, 27 Democrats voted no. ]

The massive plan touches nearly every corner of the financial universe, from the now-opaque and largely unregulated derivatives market to consumer products like credit cards to credit rating agencies to executive compensation. It also creates a new consumer financial watchdog agency.

“The crisis from which we are still recovering was born not only of failure on Wall Street, but also in Washington,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “We have a responsibility to learn from it, and to put in place reforms that will promote sound investment, encourage real competition and innovation, and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again.”

The legislation sends a clear message to Wall Street that “the party is over. Never again will the reckless behavior [of] a few threaten the fiscal stability of our people,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at a news conference after the final vote. The legislation, she continued, would “inject transparency and accountability into our financial system.”

The action now moves to the Senate, where the final outlines of the financial reform package remain murky. Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) introduced draft bill Nov. 10, but has since gone back to the drawing board, with key members on his committee now working in two-person bipartisan groups to tackle the thorniest issues.

Obama and congressional Democrats have put considerable emphasis on the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The provision was the object of some of the most intense lobbying of the entire package up until the very end. Hated by the financial industry and big business, the CFPA became the cause célèbre of liberals and consumer advocates.

Rep. Walt Minnick, a Blue Dog Democrat from deep-red Idaho, offered an amendment that would have stripped the new standalone watchdog out of the legislation and replace it with a council of existing regulators to deal with consumer protection laws. Democratic leadership tried to keep the amendment off the House floor. But Blue Dogs and the moderates that make up the pro-business New Democrat Coalition threatened to oppose the rule governing the bill unless that and other amendments were ruled in order.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Financial Services Roundtable and other industry groups lobbied members to support Minnick’s amendment; the Chamber – which has run a multimillion-dollar campaign against the CFPA — made it a key vote.

Democratic leadership whipped members against it, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took to the floor to speak against the measure, a sign of leadership’s concern that Minnick could win.

“Very frankly my friends, when you wring your hands about the cost of this referee called the consumer financial protection agency… pales into insignificance in the $1.5 trillion dollars that we have borrowed to get this country out of the deep, deep, deep hole caused by the failure to regulate properly,” Hoyer said, addressing statements from Minnick and his supporters that creating a new stand-alone agency would cost $4.6 billion – a figure Hoyer disputed.

"And it wasn’t the rich guys on Wall Street that paid that price, it was every one of our taxpayers that paid that price. So when you talk about cost, the cost of doing nothing, the cost of not having a referee on the field, skews the game so badly that the little guys, the guys who sent us here, the guys who asked us to protect them from those over which they have now power to protect, they said protect us. And that’s what this debate is about.”

In the end, Minnick’s amendment was defeated, 223 to 208, with 33 Democrats supporting it and eight Democrats not voting.

CFPA’s opponents still embraced the close vote as a sign of progress, and certainly the fate of the provision is cloudy when it comes to the more conservative Senate.

“More than 200 members supporting the Minnick amendment represents a significant victory for real consumer protection reform. It demonstrates that there is support for an alternative to new government bureaucracy, and gives us fresh momentum for an open and deliberative debate in the Senate about more effective approaches to both protect consumers and improve access to credit for our nation’s small businesses,” said Ryan McKee, senior director of the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who crafted much of the legislation with the Treasury and shepherded it through the House, described the package as the most significant increase of financial regulation since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. He said it was needed to deal with “the catastrophe inflicted on this country by a lack of sensible financial regulation” a year ago.

“The free market – particularly when it is in an innovative phase – works best with a clearly defined set of rules. And that’s what we’ve done,” Frank said. The legislation would “give full [rein] to the creativity of the financial community and their ability to play their role but it will limit the kind of abuses we’ve had.”

Republicans tried to send the entire bill back to committee as well as kill the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which the Obama administration just announced that it is extending through October 2010.

The motion was defeated, 232 to190.

“Today, House Democrats voted to continue TARP and go right on spending taxpayer dollars with reckless abandon,” charged House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

To many experts, the real meat of the package is the so-called dissolution authority it would grant federal regulators to put failing massive financial institutions to death without the need of taxpayer bailouts.

Administration officials have said that the absence of such authority is what forced them to seek taxpayer money to deal with firms such as Lehman Brothers or the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending powers to rescue mega-insurer AIG.

Under the bill, the fund would collect $150 billion from the largest financial institutions to pay for the cost of winding down one of their own should another crisis strike. Critics charge that taxpayers will still be on the hook since the fund may not cover the cost of another meltdown.

“There is no bailout fund,” Frank said during debate Thursday, taking on Republican charges that the bill amounts to a perpetual bailout fund. “The bailouts of AIG and Bear Stearns, not possible, illegal under this bill. If a company fails, it will be put to death. Yes, we have death panels, but they got the death panels in the wrong bill. The death panels are in this bill. We will spend money to get rid of them in ways that will minimize damage, money that will come from the financial community.”

The legislation also created a systemic risk council of existing regulators to act as the ranger atop the fire tower, keeping its eye on the entire forest rather than the individual tress as existing prudential regulators do.

The legislation also included a controversial – but wildly popular among members of Congress – measure from libertarian favorite Ron Paul (R-Texas) to greatly expand the Government Accountability Office’s power to audit the Federal Reserve.


Sources: Politico, My Fox33.com

CBC vs. Obama Admin (Feud)...CBC Threatens To Partner With G.O.P.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (Dem) confirms the current feud between Pres. Obama's Admin and CBC members with NBC's "Morning Joe" show panel.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Congresswoman Maxine Waters slammed Rahm Emanuel several months ago for creating the "Blue Dogs" group. She explained how the Blue Dogs are not only helping to eliminate America's Middle Class but refusing to help Poor Black Voters as well.











(Politico) Frustrated Congressional Black Caucus plays hardball with White House


The long-simmering family feud between the Congressional Black Caucus and the first African-American president burst into the open on Wednesday, with members boycotting a financial overhaul vote as a warning shot at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The 43-member caucus — which included Illinois Sen. Barack Obama from 2004 to 2008 — has chafed against President Obama and his top aides since the Inauguration, complaining that the White House takes it for granted and plays favorites with conservative Blue Dog Democrats.

Ten CBC members decided to boycott the House Financial Services Committee vote en masse after a tumultuous morning meeting at the Capitol between Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel failed to yield a deal, according to people familiar with the meeting.

The bill passed easily, but Waters suggested the CBC’s 43 members could vote with the GOP to scuttle a variety of Democratic bills if Obama and Emanuel don’t address what she thinks is a lack of understanding of the CBC’s wide-ranging goals of reducing urban unemployment, home foreclosures and bank failures.

“I think that it is important for us to educate those people around [Obama],” Waters told reporters. “We’ve got to get his people educated and moving. We have not brought these issues to him personally — it is important first to educate those people around him so they understand.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), who recently accused Obama of bowing down to the GOP on health care reform, was more pointed, shouting “Yes!” when asked if he was disappointed with Obama’s level of attentiveness to African-Americans’ needs.

He added that he had an extensive list of issues with the president — a list he said was too long to disgorge in a hallway conversation with a reporter.

“There are those who choose not to speak about African-Americans or the working class,” Waters said. “We can no longer be in denial that certain sectors of our population, including the African-American community, are feeling the recession to a greater extent.”

Waters, a former CBC chairwoman and one of its most outspoken members, clashed often with Emanuel during his days in the House and has also had a rocky relationship with the president, according to staffers.

But the volatile Los Angeles Democrat isn’t the only CBC member to have run-ins with the equally combustible Emanuel.

For years, caucus members have complained that Emanuel worked against their interests by failing to appoint a sufficient number of blacks to senior staff positions when he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Many still believe Emanuel favors the conservative, mostly white Democrats he helped elect to battleground districts in the South, West and Midwest.

CBC members have long said they would rather deal with Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who is black, but have been forced to negotiate with Emanuel, Obama’s point man in the House.

But, increasingly, the members’ grievances have focused on Obama himself.

In the lead-up to February’s stimulus vote, many caucus members grumbled that Obama buckled by allowing the GOP to strip out nearly $60 billion in aid to states to make way for an extension of the alternative minimum tax that will largely benefit the middle class.

CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is still bothered by Obama’s selection of New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg as commerce secretary — an appointment that ended with Gregg’s voluntary withdrawal over ideological differences with the White House.

And many felt Obama waited too long — nearly two months into his term — to invite them to their first White House meeting.

Waters has been meeting with Emanuel and other officials for weeks with an a-la-carte list of programmatic demands, ranging from pumping more Troubled Asset Relief Program funding into troubled inner-city banks to steering Census Bureau advertising dollars to church newsletters to appointing minority members to a consumer protection commission.

Aides say Emanuel and his staff are aware of the need to address the concerns of predominantly black inner-city districts, which often have 20-plus percent rates of unemployment. “We share the concerns raised by CBC members about struggling minority communities, and that’s why we’ve engaged in a positive way to make progress on these issues,” said Obama spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki. “We have not been informed of the reasoning behind their decision not to vote on the bill, but we continue to think it is important to move financial reform forward to prevent future crises from damaging our economy and disrupting the lives of millions of Americans, including African-Americans.”

Even though no caucus members voted for it, the administration inserted several of the CBC initiatives into the financial overhaul package, including the expansion of the consumer commission and the addition of minority liaisons at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury Department.

Until Wednesday, Waters and other CBC members had been reluctant to spell out their Obama wish list, with Financial Services Committee members refusing even to say why they skipped the vote.

The caucus released a2½-page handout to answer those questions on Wednesday, with an emphasis on addressing the economic problems of members’ districts, ranging from the crisis engulfing minority-owned auto dealerships and newspapers to the need for more-targeted foreclosure mitigation programs.

But Waters says the CBC’s point was a larger one — a statement that the group would “use our strength and our influence to better represent our communities.”






(Wall Street Journal)
Black Caucus, White House Clash


A clash between the Obama administration and the Congressional Black Caucus intensified Wednesday, illustrating how lawmakers' unease about the economy has the potential to derail White House priorities.

Ten black lawmakers refused to appear at a House committee vote on financial regulations Wednesday, a move that nearly allowed Republicans to kill a major Democratic bill.

The move was the culmination of weeks of tension, including a testy meeting two weeks ago that included Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. In the meeting, Ms. Waters berated the administration for not doing enough to help minority-owned businesses, mentioning specifically a New York broadcaster that couldn't get a loan reworked.

Less than two weeks after the meeting, the company, Inner City Broadcasting Corp., said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. agreed to restructure the loan.

The exchange about the company, which to some administration officials sounded like a bid to have the government intervene in a corporate matter, heightened distrust on both sides, people familiar with the matter say.

Caucus members at the meeting stressed they weren't asking White House officials to do anything improper, people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear whether any government official played a role in having the loan reworked.

The frustrations described by members of the caucus have less to do with the vote on the financial regulations and more to do with broader concerns about a weak economy, mounting job losses and a perception that the federal government has aided Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

At a news conference Wednesday, Ms. Waters suggested the caucus would oppose other White House priorities on the House floor. Caucus members will "use our power and our influence" to change policies on foreclosures and unemployment, as well as boost credit and federal-contracting programs for minority-owned businesses, among other things, she said.

She didn't specifically address the Inner City Broadcasting matter at the news conference.

Senior White House and other top Washington officials have been engaged in a round of shuttle diplomacy in recent days to placate the caucus, to little avail. Mr. Emanuel met with Ms. Waters and other caucus members Wednesday morning before the House Financial Services Committee vote. Mr. Emanuel declined to comment when he left.

Caucus members decided immediately after the meeting not to support passage of the financial regulations, a vote they had already delayed once. Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) held the vote anyway, and the regulations passed 31-27.

He said he learned the caucus members weren't going to show up five minutes after the vote was scheduled to begin. There are 42 caucus members in the House and 10 on Mr. Frank's committee.

A key clash between the caucus and the administration came during the Nov. 16 meeting between Mr. Geithner, Mr. Emanuel and members of the caucus. Caucus members grew increasingly frustrated at the 90-minute meeting, feeling their concerns weren't registering. Several times, Mr. Geithner told the members he couldn't do what they were asking.

At one point, Ms. Waters cited the example of Inner City Broadcasting. Messrs. Geithner and Emanuel interpreted the exchange to mean CBC members were pressuring them to lean on the bank to help a specific company, people familiar with the situation said. This led to a tense exchange between both sides.

Pierre Sutton, chairman of Inner City Broadcasting, said Goldman Sachs officials on Friday agreed to rework the terms of the loan. He wouldn't specify how much Goldman had lent his firm.

Mr. Sutton said he raised concerns about his company's situation with Ms. Waters several weeks ago, but was unaware that his company was mentioned during the meeting with Mr. Geithner.

When asked whether Goldman agreed to rework the loan because of political pressure, Mr. Sutton replied, "I'm not sure. That's not a position I want to be in, responding to that particular question."

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs said the bank "has been in constructive and mutually cooperative discussions with Inner City Broadcasting."

White House officials plan to continue meeting with the caucus and said they remain focused on the issues that have been raised.

"We share the concerns raised by CBC members about struggling minority communities, and that's why we've engaged in a positive way to make progress on these issues," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

At her news conference, Ms. Waters said minorities and minority-owned institutions had been disproportionately hurt by the financial crisis. She said minority-owned banks haven't had the same access to government capital as other banks. She also said minority-owned auto dealers, newspapers and broadcasting firms were folding because of a lack of funding. Foreclosure rates and unemployment are also higher among minorities, she said.

She didn't outline the group's specific demands. Administration officials say the caucus wants more government contracts for minority-owned businesses and increased lending in minority communities.

The discussions could put the Obama administration in an awkward position if its actions help specific companies. The House Ethics Committee is already investigating Ms. Waters's role in helping OneUnited Bank in Boston set up a meeting with Treasury officials last year. OneUnited, which was on shaky financial footing, secured Treasury bailout funds. Ms. Waters's husband had previously been on the board of the bank and was an investor. Ms. Waters has denied doing anything improper.

Meanwhile, the bill that passed Mr. Frank's committee Wednesday gives the government greater power to wind down failing financial firms, allows regulators to break up large, healthy companies in certain circumstances, and forces the Federal Reserve to face government audits on more of its operations. The full House is expected to vote on that and other financial regulatory issues next week.




(The Hill)
Black Caucus tells Pres. Obama you've done too little for African Americans


Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members on Wednesday criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to help African-Americans through the bleak economy.

Soon after withholding their votes on a wide-ranging financial services bill, 10 CBC members said they are pressuring the White House to do more.

The House Financial Services Committee voted 31-27 in favor of the bill, but the lawmakers’ boycott came on a major financial measure the administration wants to see Congress pass this month.

“We have not been forceful enough in our efforts to protect the most vulnerable of our population,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who represents one of the nation’s poorest districts. “We can no longer afford for our public policy to be defined by the worldview of Wall Street.”

The committee vote came shortly after White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was seen leaving the panel’s private staff room.

The lawmakers did not say for sure whether they would withhold their votes when the full House takes up financial overhaul legislation at the end of next week.

The CBC concerns first mounted nearly two weeks ago when the 10 members threatened to withhold their votes on the same bill. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) postponed a vote on the bill at that point.

Waters said on Wednesday that the CBC is meeting with the heads of the nation’s financial regulatory agencies on foreclosure and lending issues. She emphasized members were lining up meetings with President Barack Obama’s advisers to exert their power.

“I think we have got to get his people educated and moving,” Waters said.

The Black Caucus is also working on a proposal to create jobs that it hopes will become part of an effort under discussion among House leaders to bolster the economy.

The CBC efforts underscore the deep anxiety lawmakers have as they face an economy witnessing the highest national unemployment rate in a generation. The unemployment rate for African-Americans is 15.7 percent, compared to the national rate of 10.2 percent.

The CBC members laid out a series of policies they would like to see enacted: efforts to reduce foreclosures, including through principal write-downs; better access to credit for African-American-owned auto dealerships; more aid to small and community banks that lend to African-Americans; and more federal money going to support ad buys in minority radio stations and newspapers.

The 10 Democratic members include: Waters, Mel Watt (N.C.), Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), Lacy Clay (Mo.), David Scott (Ga.), Al Green (Texas), Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.), Gwen Moore (Wis.), Keith Ellison (Minn.) and André Carson (Ind.).

Jen Psaki, White House spokeswoman, said the administration shares the concerns raised by the CBC members.

“We have not been informed of the reasoning behind their decision not to vote on the bill, but we continue to think it is important to move financial reform forward to prevent future crises from damaging our economy and disrupting the lives of millions of Americans, including African-Americans,” Psaki said in a statement.



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Sources: Politico, Wall Street Journal, The Hill, MSNBC, Morning Joe, TPM, House.gov, AP, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps