Politics

What Issues Roil Washington? Obama’s Veto Threats are Clues

Published

10 years ago

January 23, 2015

In this Jan. 22, 2015, photo, President Barack Obama speaks during a visit to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The veto threats that he’s issued over the last three weeks are a microcosm of American politics, representing the roiling issues of the day, the power struggle playing out between Congress and the White House, and even the pique between the president and GOP congressional leaders. Obama, who vetoed just two minor bills over the past six years, has been tossing out veto threats like confetti since Republicans took full control of Congress. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

NANCY BENAC, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has a telling hit list.

The veto threats that he’s issued over the last three weeks are a microcosm of American politics, representing the roiling issues of the day, the power struggle playing out between Congress and the White House, and even the pique between the president and GOP congressional leaders.

Obama, who vetoed just two minor bills over the past six years, has been tossing out veto threats like confetti since Republicans took full control of Congress.

In addition to delivering eight formal veto notices on specific bills under consideration, the president has sounded broader warnings that he’ll block legislative efforts that jeopardize his health care law, roll back rules governing Wall Street, reverse his immigration actions or impose new sanctions on Iran.

There’s a little bit of everything in Obama’s veto threats: the culture wars (abortion), energy policy (Keystone XL oil pipeline), social matters (Obamacare), foreign policy (Iran), economic angst (financial regulation), even wonky details of governance (rule-making processes).

The list lays bare two competing visions of the proper role of government.

And while there’s plenty of political strategy behind what Obama has chosen to single out for a potential veto, he’s also “really expressing what his values are and what he believes in,” says James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. Likewise, Thurber says, for all the political positioning going on among congressional Republicans, they’ve advanced any number of bills in the face of certain veto because they believe in them.

“It’s not just a chess game,” says Thurber.

Game or not, the odds of winning are in Obama’s favor. Presidents have prevailed on 96 percent of their more than 2,500 vetoes over the years, with Congress able to muster the votes to override the presidents’ objections just 4 percent of the time.

Of all the legislation subject to an Obama veto threat, a bipartisan effort to impose new sanctions on Iran to discourage its nuclear program may have the best chance of mustering the two-thirds vote needed to override a presidential veto. A vote on that could come as early as next month.

Many of the other bills don’t stand a chance. And Republicans know that going in.

Still, it’s smart for Republicans to put forward their ideas to show a clear contrast with the president, says Dan Holler, communications director for the conservative Heritage Action for America. Holler said it’s also important to understand that any major legislation that has a chance of being enacted is going to be negotiated with the White House behind the scenes.

“By necessity that will be quiet,” says Holler, “because pretty much every single member of the Republican Party ran against Obama and everything he’s done over the past six years. Their constituents would understandably be upset if they are working hand in glove with the administration.”

Both sides appear to be “frontloading” their agendas with confrontational matters to help set the stage for the 2016 elections, with the real work to find compromises to come later, says William Galston, a former Clinton administration official.

“The question, then, is what does Phase 2 look like?” says Galston. After Obama vetoes GOP proposals and the Republicans fail to override him, “that’s when the 2015 game begins.”

Obama might want to pay more attention to timing if he wants to improve his working relations with congressional leaders.

His first two veto threats were issued while the new Congress still was being sworn in, prompting plenty of grousing from Republicans.

“He could have waited a few hours,” said House Speaker John Boehner. “Maybe he could have waited a few days. We were taking our oath of office when they were issuing veto threats. Come on.”

___

Obama’s veto notices: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/114/legislative_sap_date_2015

History of presidential vetoes: http://www.senate.gov/reference/Legislation/Vetoes/vetoCounts.htm

___

Follow Nancy Benac at http://twitter.com/nbenac.

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U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Speaks on Democracy at Commonwealth Club

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages. Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Published

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December 22, 2024

Oakland Post

: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.

By Linda Parker Pennington
Special to The Post

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed an enthusiastic overflow audience on Monday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, launching his first book, “The ABCs of Democracy.”

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages.

Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Less than a month after the election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, Rep. Jeffries also gave a sobering assessment of what the Democrats learned.

“Our message just wasn’t connecting with the real struggles of the American people,” Jeffries said. “The party in power is the one that will always pay the price.”

On dealing with Trump, Jeffries warned, “We can’t fall into the trap of being outraged every day at what Trump does. That’s just part of his strategy. Remaining calm in the face of turmoil is a choice.”

He pointed out that the razor-thin margin that Republicans now hold in the House is the lowest since the Civil War.

Asked what the public can do, Jeffries spoke about the importance of being “appropriately engaged. Democracy is not on autopilot. It takes a citizenry to hold politicians accountable and a new generation of young people to come forward and serve in public office.”

With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, Democrats must “work to find bi-partisan common ground and push back against far-right extremism.”

He also described how he is shaping his own leadership style while his mentor, Speaker-Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, continues to represent San Francisco in Congress. “She says she is not hanging around to be like the mother-in-law in the kitchen, saying ‘my son likes his spaghetti sauce this way, not that way.’”

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MacArthur Fellow Dorothy Roberts’ Advocates Restructure of Child Welfare System

Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.

Published

11 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Dorothy Roberts. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Special to The Post

When grants were announced Oct. 1, it was noted that eight of the 22 MacArthur Fellows were African American. Among the recipients of the so-called ‘genius grants’ are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit.

Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the eighth and last in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below on Dorothy Roberts is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.

A graduate of Yale University with a law degree from Harvard, Dorothy Roberts is a legal scholar and public policy researcher exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems.

Sine 2012, she has been a professor of Law and Sociology, and on the faculty in the department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roberts’s work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. She sheds light on systemic inequities, amplifies the voices of those directly affected, and boldly calls for wholesale transformation of existing systems.

This work prompted Roberts to examine the treatment of children of color in the U.S. child welfare system.

After nearly two decades of research and advocacy work alongside parents, social workers, family defense lawyers, and organizations, Roberts has concluded that the current child welfare system is in fact a system of family policing with alarmingly unequal practices and outcomes. Her 2001 book, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare,” details the outsized role that race and class play in determining who is subject to state intervention and the results of those interventions.

Through interviews with Chicago mothers who had interacted with Child Protective Services (CPS), Roberts shows that institutions regularly punish the effects of poverty as neglect.

CPS disproportionately investigates Black and Indigenous families, especially if they are low-income, and children from these families are much more likely than white children to be removed from their families after CPS referral.

In “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022),” Roberts traces the historical, cultural, and political forces driving the racial and class imbalance in child welfare interventions.

These include stereotypes about Black parents as negligent, devaluation of Black family bonds, and stigmatization of parenting practices that fall outside a narrow set of norms.

She also shows that blaming marginalized individuals for structural problems, while ignoring the historical roots of economic and social inequality, fails families and communities.

Roberts argues that the engrained oppressive features of the current system render it beyond repair. She calls for creating an entirely new approach focused on supporting families rather than punishing them.

Her support for dismantling the current child welfare system is unsettling to some. Still, her provocation inspires many to think more critically about its poor track record and harmful design.

By uncovering the complex forces underlying social systems and institutions, and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them, Roberts creates opportunities to imagine and build more equitable and responsive ways to ensure child and family safety.