President Barack Obama Weekly Address May 30, 2015 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
May 30, 2015 

Hi, everybody. As President and Commander in Chief, my greatest responsibility is the safety of the American people. And in our fight against terrorists, we need to use every effective tool at our disposal -- both to defend our security and to protect the freedoms and civil liberties enshrined in our Constitution.

But tomorrow -- Sunday, at midnight -- some important tools we use against terrorists will expire. That’s because Congress has not renewed them, and because legislation that would -- the USA Freedom Act -- is stuck in the Senate. I want to be very clear about what this means.

Today, when investigating terrorist networks, our national security professionals can seek a court order to obtain certain business records. Our law enforcement professionals can seek a roving wiretap to keep up with terrorists when they switch cell phones. We can seek a wiretap on so-called lone wolves -- suspected terrorists who may not be directly tied to a terrorist group. These tools are not controversial. Since 9/11, they have been renewed numerous times. FBI Director James Comey says they are “essential” and that losing them would “severely” impact terrorism investigations. But if Congress doesn’t act by tomorrow at midnight, these tools go away as well.

The USA Freedom Act also accomplishes something I called for a year and a half ago: it ends the bulk metadata program -- the bulk collection of phone records -- as it currently exists and puts in place new reforms. The government will no longer hold these records; telephone providers will. The Act also includes other changes to our surveillance laws -- including more transparency -- to help build confidence among the American people that your privacy and civil liberties are being protected. But if Congress doesn’t act by midnight tomorrow, these reforms will be in jeopardy, too.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The USA Freedom Act reflects ideas from privacy advocates, our private sector partners and our national security experts. It already passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support -- Republicans and Democrats. A majority of the Senate -- Republicans and Democrats -- have voted to move it forward.

So what’s the problem? A small group of senators is standing in the way. And, unfortunately, some folks are trying to use this debate to score political points. But this shouldn’t and can't be about politics. This is a matter of national security. Terrorists like al Qaeda and ISIL aren’t suddenly going to stop plotting against us at midnight tomorrow. And we shouldn’t surrender the tools that help keep us safe. It would be irresponsible. It would be reckless. And we shouldn’t allow it to happen.

So today, I’m calling on Americans to join me in speaking with one voice to the Senate. Put the politics aside. Put our national security first. Pass the USA Freedom Act -- now. And let’s protect the security and civil liberties of every American. Thanks very much.

Congress twists the relevant facts on purpose

Commentary: lawmakers deliberately distorted a recent Congressional Budget Office report 

By Wendell Potter
Source: The Center for Public Integrity

If you’re curious about what I used to do as a PR guy for the health insurance industry, how I often took facts and figures and twisted them to advance a specific political or financial agenda, take a look at the behavior of some members of Congress last week.

Like I used to do, they took numbers in a report from a government agency — in this case the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — and twisted their meaning to suggest something never intended by the report’s authors. Like I used to do, they misled the public with statistics to advance their team’s ultimate agenda, which, of course, is to win votes in November. And if getting people to vote against their own best interests means making comments that not only are dishonest but also contradict what they’ve said previously, so be it.

I have to wonder if, also like my former me, they have trouble sleeping at night.
At issue is a section of the CBO’s 10-year budget and economic outlook, which was released last Tuesday. The agency’s economists updated their previous estimates that 800,000 fewer Americans might be working in 2017 because of the Affordable Care Act than would have been the case if Congress had not passed the law. The economists now believe that the number might actually be closer to 2 million and maybe 2.5 million by 2024.

The CBO never suggested that those jobs would be “lost” or that hundreds of thousands or millions of people would be laid off because of Obamacare. Rather, the law is expected to reduce the labor participation rate, meaning that many people will choose of their own free will not to stay in jobs because they need the health insurance.

 

Over the years, both Democrats and Republicans have pledged to support efforts to eliminate what has come to be known as “job lock,” a phenomenon unique to the U.S. employer-based health insurance system. What “job lock” means is that people stay in jobs they often hate, usually at big corporations, out of fear that they might not be able to find affordable coverage if they quit, even to take a job at a smaller company.

For decades, big employers that provide health coverage in this country have had an advantage over smaller employers that can’t afford to offer subsidized benefits. They’ve been able to attract workers who might prefer to work for a small business — or start a business of their own — but decide against it solely because of health insurance.

And in a system like ours in which millions of people every year lose their health insurance when they get laid off, big employers to a large extent have been the ultimate deciders when it comes to who will be able to keep their health insurance and who will lose it.

As a consequence, most of us with employer-based coverage have always been just one layoff away from joining the ranks of the uninsured. Millions of us join those ranks every year because our employers decide our services are no longer needed.

As Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the 2012 GOP vice-presidential nominee, said during the Congressional debate on health care reform in 2009, “the key question that ought to be addressed in any health care reform legislation, is are we going to continue job lock, or are we going to allow individuals more choice and portability to fit the 21st century workforce?”

The Affordable Care Act, by changing the health insurance marketplace to make it more consumer-friendly and a little less insurance company-friendly, essentially does exactly what Ryan said should be health reform’s most important goal: it ends job lock.

But last week, after the CBO report was released, Ryan — surprise! — changed his tune. He suggested that Obamacare was encouraging people "not to get on the ladder of life, to begin working, getting the dignity of work, getting more opportunities, rising the income, joining the middle class."

Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina tweeted: “Obamacare will cost our nation about 2.5 million jobs and increase the deficit by $1 trillion.”

The next day, CBO director Doug Elmendorf said in testimony before the House Budget Committee, which Ryan chairs, that Obamacare critics were misrepresenting the data.
“The reason we don’t use the term ‘lost jobs’ is there is a critical difference between people who like to work and can’t find a job — or have a job that’s lost for reasons beyond their control — and people who choose not to work,” he said.

Despite Elmendorf’s clarification, and the Obama administration’s efforts to set the record straight, we can expect the spin to continue. Don’t be surprised to see campaign ads later this year saying that Obamacare will cost 2.5 million jobs, with the CBO cited as the source.

And you can expect millions of Americans to be influenced by the intentional misrepresentation of facts and figures during the next election. But don’t expect those politicians purposely twisting the record to lose any sleep over it.

Budget deal leaves out the jobless

By Suzy Khimm

Democrats are making an eleventh-hour push to attach an extension of federal jobless benefits to the budget agreement, hoping to keep 1.3 million Americans from losing their unemployment checks at the end of the year.

House Republicans are planning to vote Thursday on the budget framework proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray, which does not include jobless aid. Democrats will make a last-ditch attempt to attach an extension to the budget agreement when the House Rules Committee meets Wednesday afternoon to prepare the budget bill for Thursday’s vote, according to a Democratic aide.

The effort is unlikely to succeed, given the Republicans’ control of the committee, but Democrats say they’ll consider every possible avenue to extend the aid and pressure GOP members for a one-year extension, which would cost an estimated $25 billion. Currently, the only mention of jobless aid in the Ryan-Murray deal is a provision to recover overpayments “because of fraud or failure to report earnings.”

“Pressure from Democrats, local media and millions of families throughout the country is only going to intensify. This would have a very harmful, tangible impact in communities all throughout the country. We will only continue to make that clear moving forward,” says Josh Drobnyk, Democratic spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee. Democratic aides point out that the expiring jobless aid has made the front page of local papers across the country, including in Ryan’s home district in Wisconsin.

Democrats says they’d welcome a stand-alone bill to extend unemployment, but that would require the House GOP leadership to bring the legislation up for a vote. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seems resigned to the fact that an extension won’t happen before 2014. “Extension of unemployment insurance should have been a part of the deal. I’ll push for an extension when Senate convenes after the New Year,” Reid tweeted.

Aside from a few outliers like Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) and Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY), most Republicans stand firmly opposed to an extension.  ”You’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy,” Sen. Rand Paul said on Sunday.
Speaker John Boehner says he is open to proposals for more jobless aid, but he says that Democratic offers haven’t been acceptable so far. “When the White House finally called me last Friday about extending unemployment benefits, I said that we would clearly consider it as long as it’s paid for and as long as there are other efforts that’ll help get our economy moving once again,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I have not seen a plan from the White House that meets those standards.”

Advocates for the unemployed say they’re not surprised by the difficulties they’re facing on Capitol Hill. “We’ve known from the beginning this was going to be an uphill battle,” says Judy Conti, federal advocacy coordinator for the National Employment Law Project.
And there is one fallback solution for Democrats if Congress doesn’t act before the end of the year: Unemployment benefits can be restored retroactively, as they were in 2010.

My opinion on the vice-presidential debate

In today’s vice-presidential debate, everyone who watched it finally knows much more about the positions and it became much clearer who Paul Ryan is and where he stands. Paul Ryan could still not give any detail about their plans, neither on the economy nor on foreign affairs. However, he was very clear about making abortion illegal no matter was the Supreme Court had decided. He wants to force in his religious view on the rest of the country. Moreover, he made it clear that he wants to privatize social security.

On the one hand Paul Ryan is talking about the radical Muslims on the other hand he is doing the same thing with his proposals, speak forcing his own conservative religious view onto the country which prides itself as having freedom of religion.

All in all I must say, my view about the current President Barack Obama and his effort has become more desirable than what might be in store with the Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ticket.

Lies On Parade

By Kevin Baker
Published on harpers.org
 
How do I lie to thee? Let me count the ways.

There were so many last night at the Republican National Convention—and I don’t mean just the usual convenient, half-apologetic, hey-what-do-you-expect-it’s-politics lies that conventions have been delivering by the bushel ever since the Anti-Mason Party convened the very first national political convention in America in 1831 (to nominate William Wirt, a Mason).

Nor do I mean the sort of standard, jingoistic, chest-thumping lies that all powerful nations have to feed themselves to keep the dreadful business of nationalism staggering forward until it collapses in a heap of Soviet-style self-contradictions and inanities.

No, I mean really imaginative, mind-boggling, pure-evil-genius lies, almost exquisite as an example of the genre. The bad news for America is that after a night of alarming drift and dysfunction, the Republican Party is back on its game, presenting a lineup of political professionals in the tried-and-true Donald Segretti-Lee Atwater-Karl Rove ratfucker mode. This dream team relentlessly hammered home the three or four agreed-upon talking points—over and over and over again—and thereby crafted a shiny new assault-rifle clip of meretriciousness.

How shall I count the ways?

The biggest lie by implication, the one that the mainstream media has focused on, was tossed out last night by the new Blue-Eyed Mr. Death of the right, Paul Ryan. In a meticulously crafted bit of legalese, he managed to blame President Obama for the GM plant shuttering in Janesville—an act that completed the long, sad deterioration of another small American city into a festering ruin, all under Ryan’s utterly indifferent watch. (Take a look at Danny Wilcox Frasier and Charlie LeDuff’s superb Mother Jones photo essay.)

The plant actually closed down in December 2008—when sitting president George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and the entire Republican Party were still advocating that the American auto industry curl up and die. But Ryan suggested that Obama had broken a “promise” made when, during a campaign stop in Janesville in 2008, the candidate expressed the “hope” that the plant would remain open for another hundred years. (Later on last night, in a brazen MSNBC interview, the same point was made by Ryan’s tag-team pal, Scott Walker.)

But never mind. This was hardly the most outrageous lie last night. We also got to hear amazing lies of omission, lies of commission, lies with statistics, the Big Lie, and any number of small, needling, sociopathic lies that even the Republican handlers probably can no longer discern from reality.

Some examples? Sure. How about Senator John McCain, in the most grotesque speech of his life, asserting that “an American president always, always, always stands up for the rights, and freedoms, and justice of all people”—or at least did, until Barack Obama.

How about Senator John Thune condemning “the arrogance of a president whose first instinct is to condemn achievement.” That’s right, Barack Obama goes about “condemning achievement.”

How about Ohio businessman Steve Cohen, a prime-time speaker, condemning the president’s “war on coal”? Or Tim Pawlenty asserting that Joe Biden is not “a real vice president”?
Want sloppy, uncaring, historical lies from the party that talks incessantly about its love of the American past? Well, here’s Mike Huckabee sounding off on the “Founding Fathers of our great nation” and crafters of our “magnificent Constitution,” many of whom “died to pass on that heritage.”

Sorry, save for Alexander Hamilton, who was shot dead in a duel because he considered the sitting vice president to be a devious, lying asshole, all of those Founding Fathers died peaceful deaths. (Something tells me that today’s G.O.P. leaders would’ve been fighting duels almost continually if they had been around in 1804.)

Want a geopolitical lie?
Here’s Condi Rice claiming that “our friends and allies” abroad, “from Israel to Colombia, from Poland to the Philippines,” no longer “trust us.” A domestic lie? Here’s New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez claiming that Democrats “have not even passed a budget in Washington, D.C., in three years.”

Martinez, easily the most obnoxious speaker on a night that was a nonstop battle for that distinction, also strongly implied that to request Mitt Romney’s tax returns is to “demonize the American dream.” No doubt that was the implicit dream of our Founding Fathers as they fell dying on the battlefield: a world in which nobody would fight a fossil fuel, condemn achievement, or close the Janesville GM plant.