385 Ko Ddi Updates 2
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Updates DDI 2008 Santa Claus
Updates Updates........................................................................................................................................................................................................1 Econ Low.....................................................................................................................................................................................................2 OCS – Won’t pass - Pelosi...........................................................................................................................................................................3 OCS – AT: Pelosi.........................................................................................................................................................................................4 OCS – AT: ↓ Oil...........................................................................................................................................................................................5 OCS – Pelosi Key........................................................................................................................................................................................6 OCS – Won’t Pass........................................................................................................................................................................................7 Global Warming !.........................................................................................................................................................................................8 C&T elections link.......................................................................................................................................................................................9 Auto Industry Weak...................................................................................................................................................................................10 Bioterror Now/Biodefense fails.................................................................................................................................................................11 No Bioterror – Research/Biodefense solves..............................................................................................................................................12 CA State DA Brink.....................................................................................................................................................................................13 (Solar/Wind) Tax Credits – GOP hates......................................................................................................................................................14 2NC OCS Tax Credit Tradeoff Link..........................................................................................................................................................15 AT: Prolif Deterrence (Middle East)......................................................................................................................................................16 Econ = Dead...............................................................................................................................................................................................17 Econ Low...................................................................................................................................................................................................18 Econ Collapse = Slow................................................................................................................................................................................19 Economy = Resilient .................................................................................................................................................................................20 Econ Collapse Inevitable...........................................................................................................................................................................21 Econ Low/AT: Fed.....................................................................................................................................................................................22 Econ Brink.................................................................................................................................................................................................23 Econ - Growing..........................................................................................................................................................................................24 New York Economy – Low........................................................................................................................................................................25 No Israel Strikes.........................................................................................................................................................................................26 No Strikes – Israel and US.........................................................................................................................................................................27 US opposes Israeli Strikes.........................................................................................................................................................................28 No Pol Cap.................................................................................................................................................................................................29
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Econ Low Economy declining now – unemployment and slowing trade New York Times 8-1-08, Michael M. Grynbaum and Floyd Norris contributed reporting, More Arrows Seen Pointing to a Recession, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/business/01econ.html The American economy expanded more slowly than expected from April to June, the government reported Thursday, while numbers for the last three months of 2007 were revised downward to show a contraction — the first official slide backward since the last recession in 2001. Economists construed the tepid growth in the second quarter, combined with a surge in claims for unemployment benefits, as a clear indication that the economy remains mired in the weeds of a downturn. Many said the data increased the likelihood that a recession began late last year. The next major piece of data comes Friday, when the government is to release its monthly snapshot of the job market. Analysts expect the report to show a loss of 75,000 jobs, signifying the seventh straight month of declines. “We already knew the economy was weak, and now you have both a negative growth number coupled with job losses,” said Dean Baker, a director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. “There’s a lot of real bad times to come.” President Bush zeroed in on the positive growth in the second quarter — a 1.9 percent annual rate of expansion, compared with an anticipated 2.3 percent rate. That follows growth of 0.9 percent in the first quarter. He claimed success for the $100 billion in tax rebates sent out by the government this year in a bid to spur spending, along with $52 billion in tax cuts for businesses. “We got some positive news today,” the president said in West Virginia, addressing a coal industry trade association. “It’s not as good as we’d like it to be but I want to remind you a few months ago, there were predictions, and — that the economy would shrink this quarter, not grow.” But the snapshot of disappointing economic growth released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday morning provided no comfort to Wall Street, where a broad sell-off commenced. By the end of business, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 206 points to close at 11,378, a drop of nearly 2 percent. The rout may have been explained in part by significant changes the government made to historical data on the profitability of American businesses. According to the revised numbers, corporate profits earned in the United States by American companies rose much more swiftly than previously recorded from 2005 through 2007, making the recent decline appear much steeper. That the economy grew at all this spring is a testament to two bright spots — increased consumer spending fueled by the tax rebates, and the continuing expansion of American exports. Consumer spending, which amounts to 70 percent of the economy, grew at a 1.5 percent annual rate between April and June, after growing at a meager 0.9 percent clip in the previous quarter. “Clearly the tax rebates did give some oomph to the economy,” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at the research and trading firm ITG. Exports expanded at a 9.2 percent annual pace in the second quarter, up from 5.1 percent in the first three months of the year. Foreign sales have been lubricated by the weak dollar, which makes American-made goods cheaper on world markets. Adding to the improving trade picture, imports dropped by 6.6 percent, as Americans tightened their spending. Imports are subtracted from economic growth, so the effect was positive. Over all, trade added 2.42 percentage points to the growth rate from April to June. Without that contribution, the economy would have contracted. But many economists are dubious that consumer spending and exports can keep growing robustly in the face of substantial challenges that are now entrenched in the United States and are gathering force in many other major economies. Japan and much of Europe appear headed into downturns, damping demand for Americanmade products. “The trade improvement doesn’t look sustainable,” said Jan Hatzius, an economist at Goldman Sachs in New York. “In an environment where the global economy is clearly slowing, you’re not being able to get that export growth in future quarters.”
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OCS – Won’t pass - Pelosi Pelosi will block OCS passage despite overwhelming pressure Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau, 7-31-08, Despite the pressure, Pelosi stays firm: No vote on offshore oil drilling, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/31/MNSH122TA3.DTL For weeks, pressure has been mounting in Congress to approve more domestic oil drilling, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has held the line, using her power to block a vote on offshore drilling. President Bush has made almost daily calls for Democratic leaders to take action. House GOP leaders, citing a new poll showing that a slim majority of Californians now favor offshore drilling, issued a release today saying "even (Pelosi's) own California neighbors oppose her efforts to block new drilling far off American coasts." GOP lawmakers are so disgruntled they're urging Bush to deny Congress its August break by calling a special session on energy. Even some Democrats are getting antsy, fearing the party's stance could hurt in the fall elections. But Pelosi, who has opposed offshore drilling throughout her two decades in Congress, insists opening new areas to drilling won't lower gas prices in the short-term. She believes a vote would only help the GOP blame Democrats for high gas prices. "I will not ... give the administration an excuse for its failure," Pelosi said at an end-of-session roundtable interview today. Republicans have put a bull's eye on the federal moratorium on coastal drilling, which has kept most of the East and West coasts off limits to new oil rigs since 1982. Bush announced earlier this month that he would lift the presidential moratorium on drilling, and the GOP is now seeking to lift the congressional ban. Pelosi drew derision from her critics for telling Politico this week that she was blocking a vote on offshore drilling because "I'm trying to save the planet." But she elaborated on that theme today, saying she sees energy independence and fighting global warming as "my flagship issue." She said she would use her power to resist a policy that could increase the country's oil dependency. "I'm not going to be diverted for a political tactic from a course of action that has a big-picture view - a vision about an energy independent future that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels ... and focuses on those renewables that are protective of the environment," she said. Republicans are quietly gleeful at Pelosi's tactics, which have only breathed more life into an issue the GOP is clinging to as a lifeline in an otherwise grim year for the party. Some House Republicans said today that they will ask Bush to order a special session of Congress in August if lawmakers adjourn this week, as expected, without voting on drilling. While a special session is unlikely, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, made clear that his party plans to use the issue as a bludgeon against Democrats throughout the five-week August recess. "A solid majority of Americans want us to have more drilling for more American-made energy, and they aren't going to take no for an answer," Boehner said today. "Speaker Pelosi, Senators (Harry) Reid and (Barack) Obama are defying the will of the American people, and they're doing so at their own risk."
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OCS – AT: Pelosi OCS drilling will override Pelosi – 2/3 majority Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau, 7-31-08, Despite the pressure, Pelosi stays firm: No vote on offshore oil drilling, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/31/MNSH122TA3.DTL Some Democrats have already started to shift their views. Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., who voted two years ago against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and for a federal ban on offshore drilling, told a hometown paper last weekend he now wants to "drill everywhere." A new CNN/Opinion Research poll released this week found that 69 percent of Americans favor more offshore drilling, while 30 percent oppose it. But the poll found the public was split over whether more coastal drilling would lower gas prices, with 51 percent saying yes and 49 percent saying no. But the poll's more interesting finding was about who Americans blame for $4-a-gallon gas prices: About two-thirds said oil companies and foreign countries that produce energy were the major causes. Just over half blamed the Bush administration, the war in Iraq and the moratorium on offshore drilling. But only about 1 in 3 - 31 percent - blamed Democrats in Congress for high gas prices. "Republicans feel like they have an opening because of the gas price issue (to push for) domestic drilling, but we haven't seen any empirical evidence or tangible evidence that it's hurting Democrats," said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Report, which tracks House and Senate races. "Maybe this fall the issue will develop into a Republican advantage, but I don't see that we're there yet. It's a battle of messages between the two parties more than an anvil around the necks of Democrats." Pelosi has been holding votes on measures aimed at addressing gas prices, such as legislation to crack down on speculators in energy commodity markets and a measure to force Bush to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But here's the catch: The bills have won majority support, but failed to get the two-thirds backing needed to pass under special rules Pelosi has used to keep Republicans from offering a drilling measure on the House floor. Democratic leaders fear it might draw enough support to pass. The issue is likely to heat up again this fall. Republicans are debating whether to shut down the federal government - by blocking a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30 - if Democrats don't allow a vote on offshore drilling.
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OCS – AT: ↓ Oil Offshore drilling won’t affect oil prices soon CBS, 7-30-08, Reality Check On Offshore Drilling http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/30/eveningnews/main4309471.shtml?source=mostpop_story According to the federal government's own Department of Energy, drilling off America's coasts would not have a significant impact on domestic oil production or prices before 2030. And off-shore leasing wouldn't even begin before 2012. Why? Because the leasing process is cumbersome. And currently, there aren't enough rigs or workers or refineries to handle more oil. Then there's this. Most of the U.S. offshore oil, almost 10 billion barrels, lie off the coast of California. But at the current rate of U.S. consumption - about 20.7 million barrels a day - that would be burned up in 16 months. "It would have a pretty modest effect even when it did start flowing," said U.C. Berkeley energy researcher Severin Borenstein. Borenstein says it might drop pump prices as much as 25 cents a gallon in 10 years or more, but: "I think it is very unlikely that we will ever see oil prices that get us back to $2 a gallon or even $3 a gallon." Opponents of the drilling say what's off our shores is a drop in the bucket. Supporters say when the bucket is running dry, any little bit helps.
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OCS – Pelosi Key OCS will only pass if Pelosi lets it through Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, 8-3-08, The Not-So-Great Energy Debate, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-bernstein/the-not-so-great-energy-d_b_116618.html The reason this is so critical is because our only hope of winning this debate may lie in helping people to unconnect the dots between lifting the moratorium and the price of gas. Yes, it's hard to convince folks that drilling today won't lower prices tomorrow. But how about NOT drilling today? Because that's what we're talking about here. The stakes are very high. Sources on Capitol Hill tell me that the only thing holding the line on the bans right now is Pelosi's ability to block the vote. With the R's pressing this as their sole issue, and the majority of the public solidly in the "lift the ban" camp, she may not be able to control this one, and sources tell me if it comes to a vote, the ban is toast, certainly on the OCS and maybe ANWR too. If that does occur, our best move may be to go for something like the "gang of 10" compromise. That's a bipartisan group of 10 Senators who propose a limited expansion of OCS leasing with a quid pro quo that both repeals a big tax break from big oil and makes them finally pay royalties they've been avoiding for drilling on public lands.
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OCS – Won’t Pass OCS won’t pass – Dems see it as a hoax ABC News, 7-30-08, Bush Signs Housing Bill; Asks for New Focus On Energy, http://www.kcrg.com/explorepolitics/?feed=bim&id=26115324 The president recently repealed the executive branch ban on drilling in the outer continental shelf (OCS) and has called on Congress to follow suit in repealing its own ban. But the Democratic leadership, including presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, paint the problem as one we cannot drill our way out of, instead focusing their attention on curbing speculation in oil futures markets, potentially opening up a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and immediately moving toward renewable power sources like wind, solar and geothermal. Additionally, Democrats have criticized the move toward domestic oil production as an environmental hazard and a solution that would take years and have little real impact at the pump; Republicans contend that it would reduce dependency on foreign oil imports and provide a bridge toward currently less economical renewable technology. “The President knows, as his own Administration has stated, that the impact of any new drilling will be insignificant – promising savings of only pennies per gallon many years down the road,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Wednesday in response to the president’s comments. “The President has failed in his economic policy, and now he wants to say, ‘but for drilling in protected areas offshore, our economy would be thriving and the price of gas would be lower.’ That hoax is unworthy of the serious debate we must have to relieve the pain of consumers at the pump and to promote energy independence,” she continued.
Despite bipart, OCS won’t pass LA Times, 8-2-08, Senate Nears Energy Compromise, http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/hcenergy0802.artaug02,0,6146864.story However, the proposal's prospects appear a long shot for this year, with time running out on the congressional session. And in a politically charged election year, parties are stepping up attacks to highlight differences on issues such as energy policy. Although a compromise, a number of the proposals remain controversial. Included are proposals to expand drilling in the Gulf to within 50 miles of Florida, help revive the nuclear industry, and boost efforts to convert coal into motor vehicle fuel. Shortly after it was announced, the plan drew criticism from Florida's senators.
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Global Warming ! Global warming will destroy us if we don’t act now Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, 8-1-08, Can This Planet Be Saved?, New York Times, Op-Ed, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01krugman.html?hp In themselves, limits on offshore drilling are only a modest-sized issue. But the skirmish over drilling is the opening stage of a much bigger fight over environmental policy. What’s at stake in that fight, above all, is the question of whether we’ll take action against climate change before it’s utterly too late. It’s true that scientists don’t know exactly how much world temperatures will rise if we persist with business as usual. But that uncertainty is actually what makes action so urgent. While there’s a chance that we’ll act against global warming only to find that the danger was overstated, there’s also a chance that we’ll fail to act only to find that the results of inaction were catastrophic. Which risk would you rather run? Martin Weitzman, a Harvard economist who has been driving much of the recent high-level debate, offers some sobering numbers. Surveying a wide range of climate models, he argues that, over all, they suggest about a 5 percent chance that world temperatures will eventually rise by more than 10 degrees Celsius (that is, world temperatures will rise by 18 degrees Fahrenheit). As Mr. Weitzman points out, that’s enough to “effectively destroy planet Earth as we know it.” It’s sheer irresponsibility not to do whatever we can to eliminate that threat.
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C&T elections link Cap and trade causes McCain to lose the election - McCain loses base, Obama gains environmentalists Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, 8-1-08, Can This Planet Be Saved?, New York Times, Op-Ed, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01krugman.html?hp Now for the bad news: sheer irresponsibility may be a winning political strategy. Mr. McCain’s claim that opponents of offshore drilling are responsible for high gas prices is ridiculous — and to their credit, major news organizations have pointed this out. Yet Mr. McCain’s gambit seems nonetheless to be working: public support for ending restrictions on drilling has risen sharply, with roughly half of voters saying that increased offshore drilling would reduce gas prices within a year. Hence my concern: if a completely bogus claim that environmental protection is raising energy prices can get this much political traction, what are the chances of getting serious action against global warming? After all, a cap-and-trade system would in effect be a tax on carbon (though Mr. McCain apparently doesn’t know that), and really would raise energy prices. The only way we’re going to get action, I’d suggest, is if those who stand in the way of action come to be perceived as not just wrong but immoral. Incidentally, that’s why I was disappointed with Barack Obama’s response to Mr. McCain’s energy posturing — that it was “the same old politics.” Mr. Obama was dismissive when he should have been outraged. So as I said, I’m very glad to know that Nancy Pelosi is trying to save the planet. I just wish I had more confidence that she’s going to succeed.
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Auto Industry Weak Auto Industry dying Bill Vlasic, reporter for the Detroit News and a former Business Week correspondent, 8-2-08, G.M. Loses $15.5 Billion in Quarter, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/business/02gm.html The General Motors Corporation reported a stunning second-quarter loss of $15.5 billion on Friday because of a dramatic decline in United States sales and charges for job cuts, plant closings and the falling value of trucks and sport utility vehicles. G.M., the largest American automaker, said it lost $6.3 billion on operations in the quarter that ended June 30, and its worldwide revenues fell 18 percent. But the company’s overall loss was inflated by $9.1 billion in special charges that included $3.3 billion for buyouts of hourly workers and $2.8 billion related to the bankruptcy filing of its former parts unit, the Delphi Corporation. The dismal earnings reflected the impact of steadily falling vehicles sales in the overall United States market, and a huge shift by consumers away from the trucks and S.U.V.’s that were once G.M.’s most profitable vehicles. The automaker’s shares were off sharply on Friday, falling 68 cents, or about 6 percent, to $10.39 shortly before 1 p.m. G.M.’s chairman, Rick Wagoner, said Friday that the charges to scale down the automaker’s work force and manufacturing operations were critical in its restructuring. “As our recent product, capacity and liquidity actions clearly demonstrate, we are reacting rapidly to the challenges facing the U.S. economy and auto market, and we continue to take the aggressive steps necessary to transform our U.S. operations,” Mr. Wagoner said. Overall vehicle sales in the United States dropped 10 percent in the first six months. Automakers are scheduled to report their July sales later on Friday. But while weak economic conditions and falling sales have affected nearly every automaker, Detroit’s three car companies have borne the brunt of the slowdown. Last week, the Ford Motor Company reported a loss of $8.7 billion as it took big write-downs on the values of its North American truck plants and its inventory of used pickups and S.U.V.’s. G.M.’s second-quarter results were worse than projected by analysts, particularly its performance in its core North American market. The company lost $4.4 billion in North America in the period, and its revenue dropped 33 percent, from $29.7 billion to $19.8 billion. That compared with a profit of $92 million in the quarter a year ago. While G.M.’s vehicle sales in North America fell 20 percent in the quarter, the company’s international sales grew 10 percent. Last month, as investors speculated openly about the possibility of G.M.’s filing for bankruptcy protection, the automaker announced broad plans for further cost cuts, asset sales and debt offerings to improve its liquidity by $15 billion. In its second-quarter report, G.M. said it had $21 billion in cash reserves and access to another $5 billion in credit. But the automaker is burning through about $1 billion a month in cash as it tries to keep financing new product programs amid falling sales and revenue. G.M., like its Detroit rivals Ford and Chrysler, was surprised by the abrupt shift to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. As gas prices rose above $4 a gallon, sales of G.M.’s large pickups and S.U.V.’s declined sharply in a market that was already trending downward. While its overseas operations continued to perform well, G.M.’s United States sales dropped, and the company’s inventories of unsold trucks forced it to scale back production in the United States dramatically. . In June, Mr. Wagoner said the company would close four assembly plants making pickups and S.U.V.’s by 2010 and slash 500,000 units of vehicle production. And in a move that symbolized the end of the S.U.V. era, Mr. Wagoner said that G.M. had begun a “strategic review” toward a likely sale of its Hummer brand. Besides cutting truck and S.U.V. production, G.M. also announced plans to add third shifts at two plants to increase the output of smaller cars. The automaker stepped up its cutbacks in the United States by offering another round of buyout and early retirement programs to its hourly workers. About 19,000 workers — or a quarter of its unionized work force — accepted the offers and agreed to leave the company. But even as G.M. kept cutting, speculation grew among investors this summer that the automaker was running dangerously short on cash reserves.
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Bioterror Now/Biodefense fails High risk of bioterror attack now – biodefense increases risk, and al-Qaeda is developing it ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, 8-3-08, Debate Is Revived Over U.S. Efforts on Bioterrorism, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03anthrax.html?pagewanted=2 Today, there are hundreds of such researchers in scores of laboratories at universities and other institutions around the United States, preparing for the next bioattack. But the revelation that F.B.I. investigators believe that the anthrax attacks were carried out by Dr. Ivins, an Army biodefense scientist who committed suicide last week after he learned that he was about to be indicted for murder, has already re-ignited a debate: Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs? “We are putting America at more risk, not less risk,” said Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, chairman of a House panel that has investigated recent safety lapses at biolabs. F.B.I. investigators have long speculated that the motive for the attacks, if carried out by a biodefense insider like Dr. Ivins, might have been to draw public attention to a dire threat, attracting money and prestige to a once-obscure field. If that was the motive, it succeeded — for example, an experimental vaccine Dr. Ivins had spent years working on moved from the laboratory to a proposed billion-dollar federal contract after the attacks, which killed five people. Almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent since 2001 to build new laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs. Patents Dr. Ivins held on the research might have proved personally profitable. An anthrax vaccine he helped invent was slated to be added to the nation’s vaccine stockpile through an $877 million contract awarded in 2004. But the deal collapsed in late 2006 after the contractor, VaxGen of Brisbane, Calif., failed to meet deadlines. VaxGen, in a licensing agreement with the Army to produce the vaccine, had listed two patents held by Dr. Ivins and his colleague, but it made no mention of compensation planned for their work. Despite the insistence of Dr. Ivins’s lawyer and some of the scientist’s colleagues that he was innocent, officials at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. on Saturday appeared confident that they had the right man, though they said they were still weighing how and when to seek an end to the grand jury investigation. “That’s not a decision we’re going to make lightly,” one Justice Department official said Saturday. “There won’t be a rush to judgment.” Nearly seven years have passed without another biological attack, which has reduced the sense of urgency about the bioterrorist threat, even among some specialists. “I think it’s an important risk, but frankly I’m more concerned about bombs and guns, which are easily available and can be very destructive,” said Randall S. Murch, a former F.B.I. scientist who has studied ways to trace a bioterrorist attack to its source. Federal officials say they are convinced that the surge in spending has brought real gains. “Across the spectrum of biothreats we have expanded our capacity significantly," said Craig Vanderwagen, an assistant secretary at Health and Human Services who oversees the biodefense effort. Systems to detect an attack, investigate it and respond with drugs, vaccines and cleanup are all hugely improved, Mr. Vanderwagen said. "We can get pills in the mouth." Supporters of the spending surge cite studies that project apocalyptic tolls from a large-scale bioattack. One 2003 study led by a Stanford scholar, for instance, found that just two pounds of anthrax spores dropped over an American city could kill more than 100,000 people, even if antibiotic distribution began quickly. And there is ample evidence that Qaeda leaders have shown interest in using biological weapons. Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian-born Qaeda biochemist who trained in the United States, spent several months in 2001 trying to cultivate anthrax in Kandahar, Afghanistan. But the proliferation of biodefense research laboratories presents real threats, too, Congressional investigators recently warned. More people in more places handling toxic agents create more opportunities for an accident or intentional misuse by an insider, Keith Rhodes, an investigator with the Government Accountability Office, said at a Congressional hearing in October. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the intelligence community were the ones who were most concerned about it,” Mr. Rhodes testified. There also is insufficient federal oversight of biodefense facilities to make sure the laboratories follow security rules and report accidents that might threaten lab workers or, in an extreme case, lead to a release that might endanger the public, Mr. Rhodes testified. In effect the government may be providing the tools that a would-be terrorist could use, said Richard H. Ebright, a Rutgers University biochemist and vocal critic of the federal surge in biodefense spending. “One well-placed student, technician or senior scientist — no cost, with the salary being provided courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer — and no risk, no difficulty,” Mr. Ebright said. “That is all it takes.” Heightening the concern has been a string of accidents at certain new or expanded biodefense laboratories, several of which were not properly reported to authorities when they first took place.
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No Bioterror – Research/Biodefense solves Status quo solves bioterrorism – research ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, 8-3-08, Debate Is Revived Over U.S. Efforts on Bioterrorism, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03anthrax.html?pagewanted=2 Proponents say that clustering the laboratories on a military base will encourage safe scientific collaboration and save money through sharing of some facilities. The build-up, and the related surge in research, has brought some important advances, federal officials argue, such as a promising new experimental vaccines or therapies to treat smallpox or Ebola virus. The country now also has a greatly expanded stockpile of vaccines and drugs to treat anyone exposed in a future attack, including enough antibiotics to treat 40 million Americans who might be exposed to anthrax and nearly 5 million bottles of a special potassium iodide liquid that help protect infants from harm caused by nuclear fallout. Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, said he was convinced that the increased spending has left the nation better prepared for a future attack, without creating significant new vulnerabilities. “You can never say that the system is 100 percent secure,” he said. “But the research ethic today is one of much greater disciple and focus on security than was true prior to the anthrax attacks.”
Status quo can solve bioterror ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, 8-3-08, Debate Is Revived Over U.S. Efforts on Bioterrorism, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03anthrax.html?pagewanted=2 Nearly seven years have passed without another biological attack, which has reduced the sense of urgency about the bioterrorist threat, even among some specialists. “I think it’s an important risk, but frankly I’m more concerned about bombs and guns, which are easily available and can be very destructive,” said Randall S. Murch, a former F.B.I. scientist who has studied ways to trace a bioterrorist attack to its source. Federal officials say they are convinced that the surge in spending has brought real gains. “Across the spectrum of biothreats we have expanded our capacity significantly," said Craig Vanderwagen, an assistant secretary at Health and Human Services who oversees the biodefense effort. Systems to detect an attack, investigate it and respond with drugs, vaccines and cleanup are all hugely improved, Mr. Vanderwagen said. "We can get pills in the mouth."
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CA State DA Brink California’s economy is on the brink New York Times, 8-3-08, California Is Among States Struggling With Budgets, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03budget.html?ref=us Among states struggling with budget deficits brought on by a national economic slowdown and the subprime lending crisis, California saw its problems brought into sharp relief last week. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a temporary pay cut to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour for roughly 200,000 state workers, if the state controller goes along with it, and the laying off of 10,000 more. Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said he would reimburse workers for their full pay once the Legislature had finished the state budget, now several weeks overdue and about $17 billion in the red. California is among the worst-hit states in the foreclosure crisis, and a record number of California homeowners met with foreclosures last quarter — 121,341 defaults, up 125 percent from the second quarter of 2007, according to DataQuick Information Systems. The state is also one of the few that require a two-thirds legislative majority to pass a budget, which is particularly challenging with large deficits and unpopular cuts. Further, the state relies on income taxes rather than property taxes for most of its revenues, a difficult formula in times when jobs are in short supply. And the structure of the state’s budget, which is heavily leveraged and peppered with numerous mandatory spending requirements approved as ballot measures by voters, makes it all the harder to balance. “Propositions have money mandates,” said Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and an expert on the state’s constitution. “So much of the state is in hock, anyway.” The state has already made a 10 percent cut to its Medicaid reimbursement rate and deferred payments to vendors. Mr. Schwarzenegger has called for 10 percent across-the-board reductions to all general fund departments, and a sales tax increase may also be in the offing.
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(Solar/Wind) Tax Credits – GOP hates Current GOP hates tax credits for solar/wind energy JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press, 7-30-08, GOP blocks action on tax, renewable energy package, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5icrolgbXr0mlnZQmLr-1svIyNDpwD9289B8O0 For the fourth time this summer Republicans stopped the Senate from taking up wide-ranging legislation that extends tax breaks for teachers, businesses and parents and provides tax credits to an array of renewable energy entrepreneurs. Major business groups, usual GOP allies, have implored Congress to act on the tax credits, many which expired at the end of last year or will run out at the end of this year. But for many Republicans, it's a matter or principle and politics: many oppose what they say are new tax increases to pay for parts of the package and nearly all say the Senate's only business now is acting on an energy bill that promotes drilling and other measures to boost domestic oil supply. The White House, citing new taxes and other objections to the bill, threatened a presidential veto. The vote Wednesday was 51-43, nine short of the 60 needed to begin floor debate. "All the Republicans want to do is not pay for anything and we know the House would not accept that," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., anticipating the defeat. But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said his party sees a "need to dispose of the pending energy bill to help bring down the price of gas at the pump before turning to other matters." The bill would extend some $18 billion worth of renewable energy tax credits, helping out investors in wind and solar power, clean coal, plug-in electric vehicles and a variety of others.
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2NC OCS Tax Credit Tradeoff Link Passage of tax credits depletes GOP influence on drilling The Politico, 7-31-08, Reid: Work On Energy Bill "over Until The Fall" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/31/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4312030.shtml Republicans countered that by insisting on considering a tax extenders bill alongside the speculation bill, Reid was “moving the goalposts” to avoid potentially difficult votes on domestic drilling.
GOP is blocking tax credits on alternative energy to get oil drilling – plan eliminates it, allowing dems to block OCS Jim DiPeso, the policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection, 8-3-08, Reckless and Feckless, Congress Sandbags Renewables, http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/republican/renewable-energy-tax-incentives-55080301 Both Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress have professed their undying love for renewable energy resources. Their affection, however, took a back seat to rock 'em, sock 'em partisan politics when the Senate failed to move legislation extending various tax incentives for renewable resources. If the game of chicken goes on much longer, the tax incentives will expire at the end of the year, and billions of dollars in wind, solar, and other clean energy investment capital is likely to go elsewhere, where the politics are less toxic and the financial certainty more solid. Rather than putting money where their energy mouths are, both parties are playing for political trophies. Reckless and feckless, that’s what they are. The reckless Republicans are blocking important bills, such as the renewables incentives, as leverage to push for oil drilling floor votes, which polls show may play to their advantage. The feckless Democrats are maneuvering to dodge oil drilling floor votes, which has the effect of sandbagging important bills, such as the renewables incentives. They’re trying to run out the clock while they hope that the November election will paint the whole town blue.
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AT: Prolif Deterrence (Middle East) Deterrence doesn’t apply for Middle East prolif – at best it causes nuclear terrorism Stephen Peter Rosen, Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs, Harvard, 2006, After Proliferation, Foreign Affairs, Academic Search Premier Assume, for the sake of argument, that within the next decade Iran manages to acquire a few crude nuclear weapons and that these can be delivered by ballistic missiles within the Middle East and by clandestine means to the United States and Europe. Assume also that Saudi Arabia and Turkey, out of fear or competitive emulation, also develop their own nuclear arsenals. How would strategic interactions in this new world play out? During the Cold War, the small number of nuclear states meant that the identity of any nuclear attacker would be obvious. Preparations could thus be made for retaliation, and this helped deter first strikes. In a multipolar nuclear Middle East, however, such logic might not hold. For deterrence to work in such an environment, there would have to be detection systems that could unambiguously determine whether a nuclear-armed ballistic missile was launched from, say, Iran, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia. In earlier decades, the United States spent an enormous amount of resources on over-the-horizon radars and satellites that could detect the origin of missile launches in the Soviet Union. But those systems were optimized to monitor the Soviet Union and may not be as effective at identifying launches conducted from other countries. It may be technically simple for the United States (or Israel or Saudi Arabia) to deploy such systems, but until they exist and their effectiveness is demonstrated, deterrence might well be weak; it would be difficult to retaliate against a bomb that has no clear return address. It gets worse. During the Cold War, most analysts considered it unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used during peacetime; they worried more about the possibility of a nuclear conflict somehow emerging out of a conventional war. That scenario would still be the most likely in a postproliferation future as well, but the frequency of conventional wars in the Middle East would make it a less comforting prospect. If a nuclear-armed ballistic missile were launched while conventional fighting involving non-nuclear-armed ballistic missiles was going on in the region, how confident would any government be that it could identify the party responsible? The difficulty would be greater still if an airplane or a cruise missile were used to deliver the nuclear weapon. One of the greatest fears about Iran's possible acquisition of nuclear weapons, moreover, is that Tehran might give them to a terrorist group, which would dramatically increase the likelihood of their being used. Some argue that the Iranian government would never condone such a transfer; others that it would. There is no way of knowing for sure.
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Econ = Dead The economy is dead and can’t be revived – 13 reasons The Financial Times UK, 8-4-08, Only luck can save America's economy, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db4d7196-61bb-11ddaf94-000077b07658.html The US economy may not be in recession, but this is the nearest thing. In spite of the recent fiscal stimulus, output grew less than 2 per cent at an annual rate in the second quarter, slower than expected. That followed growth of 1 per cent in the first quarter and a contraction (on revised numbers) of 0.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2007. A recession is usually defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking output. It has not happened yet, but it very well might in the next few quarters. Even if it does not, that would be little consolation. Prospects for the second half of the year are poor. Some of the current boost from the fiscal injection delivered last quarter will keep feeding through, but consumer spending, the hitherto unstoppable engine of US growth, is stalling. The prices of food and petrol, together with still-tightening credit conditions and a housing market that has not yet touched bottom, are weighing it down. Net exports were the main accelerator in the second quarter - without that rise, in fact, output would have fallen, fiscal stimulus or no. But they cannot be relied on in future because growth in Europe and elsewhere is going to be limited by, among other things, policymakers' worries about inflation. Most forecasters are expecting a double-dip US slowdown - and the second dip could be a technical recession. Regardless, the labour market is already behaving that way. Unemployment moved up to 5.7 per cent in July, the labour department reported on Friday. Overtime is falling; involuntary part-time working is on the rise. Unemployment will climb above 6 per cent next year. While it may be true that the US has seen much worse, this is no mere "mental recession". What more can be done? The short answer is nothing. The policy options have narrowed almost to zero. The Federal Reserve has already cut interest rates sharply - more than some think wise - and is having to assure the markets that it is keeping an eye on inflation. In spite of the slowdown, consumer prices are rising at their fastest for almost 20 years. Crucially, this has not embedded itself in expectations of permanently higher inflation. If that happens, and prices start pushing wages, interest rates would have to go up. The recent poor numbers for output and jobs led markets not to expect that interest rates will be cut further, but to hope that they will not be raised again just yet. Some fiscal room for manoeuvre would be good right now - but precious little remains. The White House just updated its budget forecasts for next year. These pencil in a deficit of nearly $500bn (£253bn, €321bn). This excludes roughly $80bn of war costs. It also makes incomplete allowance for the fiscal component of the various housing-related bail-outs now in train. If Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the housing agencies, are forced to draw on the full support that the Treasury, with the passage of the new housing bill, is empowered to provide, add tens of billions more. A deficit of 5 per cent of gross domestic product next year is within reach. Looking farther ahead, both presidential candidates are promising to cut taxes by thousands of billions of dollars over the next 10 years (relative to the Bush administration's bogus baseline). Barack Obama, the Democratic contender, is calling for an additional fiscal stimulus right now. Budget deficits should indeed rise sharply in recessions. In the US, this requires more forceful intervention than in most European countries. Automatic fiscal stabilisers are less powerful in the US: the government is smaller, and the tax base (lacking a value-added tax or equivalent) is less cyclically sensitive. States have to comply with semi-binding balanced budget rules as well, which perversely tighten fiscal policy during recessions. California, in the midst of the current slowdown, has been forced to sack thousands of workers and put state employees on the minimum wage. Even so, further aggressive fiscal easing at the federal level would be risky. If the budget outlook starts to scare the markets and interrupt the flow of foreign capital to the US, the dollar might fall abruptly - worsening the inflation risk and forcing the Fed's hand on interest rates. The point at which fiscal easing becomes self-cancelling may not be far away. It is worth remembering where the blame for this neutering of fiscal policy lies: squarely with the Bush administration. At the start of this decade, the budget stood in surplus to the tune of 2.4 per cent of GDP. On unchanged policy, this was expected to grow to a surplus of 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2008. This year's actual deficit of 3 per cent of GDP therefore represents a worsening of more than 7 per cent of GDP, or roughly $1,000bn. Almost all of this deterioration is due to policy: to tax cuts, spending increases, and their associated debt-service costs. That projected surplus was a priceless gift to the White House. It offered the Bush administration ample scope for outlays on homeland security and other unforeseen priorities, and moderate tax cuts as well, all within a budget balanced over the course of the business cycle. Instead, the administration knowingly opted for outrageous fiscal excess - adding insult to injury with its phoney tax-cut sunset provisions, designed for no other purpose than to disguise the long-term fiscal implications. Eight years on, this startling record of fiscal irresponsibility has all but taken fiscal policy off the table as an available response to the slowdown. The US economy had better have luck on its side. Luck is about all it has left.
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Econ Low Economy is weak – mortgage crisis, auto industry collapse NYT, 8-4-08, VIKAS BAJAJ, Housing Lenders Fear Bigger Wave of Loan Defaults, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/business/04lend.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 Homeowners with good credit are falling behind on their payments in growing numbers, even as the problems with mortgages made to people with weak, or subprime, credit are showing their first, tentative signs of leveling off after two years of spiraling defaults. The percentage of mortgages in arrears in the category of loans one rung above subprime, so-called alternative-A mortgages, quadrupled to 12 percent in April from a year earlier. Delinquencies among prime loans, which account for most of the $12 trillion market, doubled to 2.7 percent in that time. The mortgage troubles have been exacerbated by an economy that is still struggling. Reports last week showed another drop in home prices, slower-than-expected economic growth and a huge loss at General Motors. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate in July climbed to a four-year high. While it is difficult to draw precise parallels among various segments of the mortgage market, the arc of the crisis in subprime loans suggests that the problems in the broader market may not peak for another year or two, analysts said. Defaults are likely to accelerate because many homeowners’ monthly payments are rising rapidly. The higher bills come as home prices continue to decline and banks tighten their lending standards, making it harder for people to refinance loans or sell their homes. Of particular concern are “alt-A” loans, many of which were made to people with good credit scores without proof of their income or assets. “Subprime was the tip of the iceberg,” said Thomas H. Atteberry, president of First Pacific Advisors, a investment firm in Los Angeles that trades mortgage securities. “Prime will be far bigger in its impact.” In a conference call with analysts last month, James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said he expected losses on prime loans at his bank to triple in the coming months and described the outlook for them as “terrible.”
The economy is weak and won’t revive itself soon Rodrigue Tremblay Online Journal, 8-4-08, The U.S. economy and bad government policies, http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3575.shtml In the same spirit, some refer to the Fed’s bailouts of troubled investment banks as a sort of Bernanke put, because of the Fed’s aggressive policy of reducing interest rates to fight market falls or to bail out financial companies in trouble. Because of the current economic slowdown, the inflationary consequences of such a policy is not apparent yet, but it could be the foundations of future inflation down the road. Let us keep in mind that historically-low interest rates, lax lending standards, and inadequate regulation were behind the U.S. housing bubble. The seeds are now sown for the next bubble. Third, let us look quickly at fiscal policy. The Bush-Cheney administration’s fiscal policy has been characterized by budget deficit upon budget deficit, whatever the state of the economy. In its entire eight years in office, in fact, it has never balanced the budget. On the contrary, it has even spent the budget surplus that it inherited from the Clinton administration. And it has announced that it plans to leave the coming administration with a record 2009 deficit of half a trillion dollars. Indeed, the previous Bush-Cheney administration’s record was its 2004 $413 billion deficit. Although such deficits at about 3.3 percent of the gross national product (GDP) are lower than the 6.0 percent of GDP we saw in the early 1980’s, they are cumulative, and they have occurred at a time when U.S. foreign indebtedness is much higher and the U.S. dollar much weaker. It can be said that they have contributed to weakening the United States and making it more vulnerable to economic and financial shocks.
The US Economy is weak Mercopress, 8-1-08, US economy picks up but Governors give different picture, http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=14123&formato=HTML Mr Paulson predicted that the US economy would get stronger next year "and beyond". But the figure was worse than expected and caused shares to fall. The benchmark Dow Jones index closed more than 200 points, or 1.78% lower at 11,378.02 points. Investors were also concerned that the government had downgraded its estimate of growth in the last three months of 2007 from the previous reading of 0.6% to show a negative growth figure of -0.2%. The US dollar fell across the board, including against the Euro and the yen, following the release of the data. At the current growth rate of nearly 2%, the US economy is only growing at half the rate it was one year ago.
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Econ Collapse = Slow Economic collapse will be slow – current mortgage crisis proves Rodrigue Tremblay Online Journal, 8-4-08, The U.S. economy and bad government policies, http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3575.shtml In economics, bad decisions and bad policies do not always result in immediate negative consequences. It takes time for them to work their way through the economy and produce their corrosive effects. Many of the current economic and financial problems of today are the result of bad policies of the past.
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Economy = Resilient Even if government policies are hurting the economy, the private sector is resilient Rodrigue Tremblay Online Journal, 8-4-08, The U.S. economy and bad government policies, http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3575.shtml There have been many policy missteps over the last 20 some years, and this has amounted to a mismanagement of the U.S. economy. The result has been an unhealthy mixture of greed, shortsightedness and market manipulation. And now, all the chickens are coming home to roost and the crisis is deepening. This does not mean that the private side of the U.S. economy is not resilient and strong. It only means that government policies have often been misguided and have damaged the private economy and hurt the people economically.
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Econ Collapse Inevitable Econ collapse inevitable Rodrigue Tremblay Online Journal, 8-4-08, The U.S. economy and bad government policies, http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3575.shtml Essentially, at the government level, each new economic crisis seems to have been “solved” by creating the conditions for the next one. This is particularly true in regards to regulation policy, monetary policy, and fiscal policy. Each time a policy choice had to be made, it seems that short-term benefits were often privileged at the expense of long-term costs. First, let us consider regulation policy for the crucial financial sector. Over the last 20 years, U. S. deregulation of the financial sector has been based on developing what I would call predatory financial capitalism, that is to say the systematic encouragement of excessive risk taking (moral hazard) and of corporate greed in general, the development of the pyramidal $2.5 trillion hedge fund industry, the practice of highly-leveraged buyouts (LBOs) of healthy companies with their own highyield debt, also known as “bootstrap” investments, and the practice of program trading. Moreover, this was a system that was not only risky but also fraught with shady activities. To accomplish this deregulation or non-regulation of the financial sector and to encourage the over-indebtedness of the U.S. economy, a whole series of safeguards that had been wisely established to prevent a repeat of the financial and economic disasters of the 1930s were dismantled and cast aside. The last one in line was the reckless abolition by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the speculative prevention rule called the downtick-uptick rule (which prohibited short-selling when stock prices were falling), in July 2006. Such safeguards had been put in place in order to avoid systemic financial instability, to make financial institutions more responsible to users and to avoid costly government bailouts when large financial institutions fail. Today, we are back to the 1930s with large financial institutions reaping huge profits and paying obscene salaries to their CEOs in good times and with government bailing them out with public money when things turn sour.
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Econ Low/AT: Fed Economy is weak and Fed won’t change rates USA Today, 8-4-08, Barbara Hagenbaugh, Fed unlikely to change rates this week, http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-08-03-fed-fmoc-bernanke_N.htm Federal Reserve policymakers are finding their jobs aren't getting any easier as a sluggish economy and stubbornly high inflation put them in an interest-rate bind. Given the competing challenges, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are expected to keep their target for short-term interest rates, which influence borrowing costs economywide, at 2% when they meet Tuesday. The rate has been steady since April. The meeting comes a year after U.S. central bankers began aggressively pumping money into a faltering financial system. In some ways, the job now has become more complicated. While they continue to fight to stabilize financial markets and an economy weakened by the housing meltdown, Fed policymakers now also have to ward off inflationary pressures that have nearly doubled in the last year in large part because of rapidly rising energy and food prices. The consumer price index was up 5% in June from a year earlier, the highest in 17 years. While the weak economy would suggest the need for lower interest rates, price pressures are forcing the Fed to sit on the sidelines. The Fed would normally raise rates to combat inflation.
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Econ Brink Economy is growing and stabilizing, but faces difficulties AFP, 8-1-08, Paulson sees US economy still growing this year, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iE-ObRDGruw_UuQ6i4G8TTt_Bxw Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Thursday he expects "moderate" growth in the US economy this year and some stability returning to the housing market in a matter of months. The top US economic official made his comments after data showed a 1.9 percent growth pace in the second quarter lifted by an economic stimulus plan and exports, but with some analysts still worried about a possible recession. "While our economy faces substantial difficulties that will continue to be a drag on growth in the short term, it is important to remember that our long-term fundamentals are strong," he said in a Washington speech. "Recognizing the challenges ahead of us, I expect our economy to continue growing this year although at a moderate pace. We are making progress although not in a straight line; housing continues to be at the heart of our economic challenges and remains our most significant downside risk." Paulson was relatively upbeat on prospects for a recovery in the battered housing market after the worst slump in decades. He said the market will be helped by the recently enacted housing rescue package aimed at helping homeowners refinance and adding liquidity to the sector, but suggested there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel.
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Econ - Growing US Economy is growing Mercopress, 8-1-08, US economy picks up but Governors give different picture, http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=14123&formato=HTML "Clearly the stimulus plan has supported the US economy during this difficult period and couldn't have been timelier," said US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Without that extra government spending, which added almost 4% to the economy that quarter, it is feared that growth would have been negative. Analysts are now concerned about what will happen to the US when the benefit of the stimulus package, which gave tax rebates to 130 million households, has passed. The US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he expects the economy to continue growing this year and "to return to stronger growth next year and beyond".
US economy is growing – stimulus plan and Fannie/Freddie – data proves WSJ, 7-31-08, Paulson Says Stimulus Worked, But Housing Still Correcting, MAYA JACKSON RANDALL, Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121752429127901443.html?mod=googlenews_wsj U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Thursday said new economic data prove that the economic stimulus plan has successfully propped up the U.S. economy, but said it will take additional months for the housing market -- the biggest risk to the economy -- to fully recover. That said, his focus going forward will be on the housing and capital markets, he said in a speech at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. "Our first and most urgent priority is working through the housing downturn and capital market turmoil and that will be our priority until these situations are resolved," said Mr. Paulson. The fact that the U.S. economy expanded modestly in the second quarter of 2008 is proof that the economic stimulus plan backed by Congress and the Bush Administration "has supported the U.S. economy" amid difficulties in the housing and financial markets, the Treasury chief said. Meanwhile, Mr. Paulson said he expects the U.S. economy to continue to grow, although it will take additional time for the troubled housing and credit markets to return to normal. "Recognizing the challenges ahead of us, I expect our economy to continue growth this year although at a moderate pace," he said. "We are making progress although not in a straight line; housing continues to be at the heart of our economic challenges and remains our most significant downside risk." According to data the Commerce Department released early Thursday, the U.S. economy sped up in the spring after shrinking late last year. Still, growth was weaker than expected. The department said gross domestic product climbed only 1.9% in the second quarter despite the tax rebates provided in the economic stimulus package. Wall Street had expected 2.3% growth in GDP. Addressing ongoing issues in the housing markets, Mr. Paulson said he expects foreclosures and existing home inventories to remain "substantially elevated" in 2008 and 2009. "And home prices are likely to decline further on a national basis," he said. Still, he argued that the markets could move through the bulk of the housing market correction "in months rather than years." Mr. Paulson reiterated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's continued activity is central to the speed at which the U.S. economy revives.
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New York Economy – Low New York’s economy is weak Mercopress, 8-1-08, US economy picks up but Governors give different picture, http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=14123&formato=HTML New York governor David Paterson earlier this week admitted the state economy was in recession and announced spending cuts to face a steep budget deficit due to declining tax revenues.
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No Israel Strikes Israel won’t strike – rhetoric is all psychological Eli Hoffmann, Seeking Alpha Editor, 8-3-08, Don't Bet on an Iran War - Barron's, http://seekingalpha.com/article/88776-don-t-beton-an-iran-war-barron-s Despite Israel's saber-rattling, Barron's says the threat of an Israel or U.S. attack on Iran is negligible. George Friedman, founder and head of highly-respected (and prescient) Stratfor global-intelligence company notes: The Iran-attack story gained widespread credence after the New York Times reported June 20 that more than 100 Israeli aircraft had participated several weeks earlier in a military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean, near Greece. The distance from Israel was roughly 900 miles, the same as that separating Israel from Iran, and the exercise was viewed as a trial run for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Just a day later, the Times of London quoted Israeli military sources who confirmed the "dress rehearsal" nature of the exercise, while a story in the Jerusalem Post alluded to previous statements made by Israeli intelligence officials who said Iran would cross an unspecified nuclear threshold in 2008, not 2009, as expected. The saber-rattling by unnamed officials smacks of psychological warfare to Friedman, however -- not preparations for the real thing. "Why would Israel telegraph its punch like that?" he asks. "Recall that when Israel took out Iraq's Osirak reactor back in 1981, it was successful precisely because it gave no hint at all of an impending attack." An attack on Iran would essentially close the Strait of Hormuz until the area was de-mined, which could easily drive crude prices "to more than $300 a barrel, which even over a short period would be cataclysmic to the global economy and stock markets." Ahmadinejad has recently toned down his anti-Western rhetoric, while the U.S. has softened its stance. Besides which, Friedman says, Iran is decades away from developing credible nuclear weaponry - and by all measures may never get there. Lacking Western know-how, the best it can hope for down the road would be a controlled explosion of a crude device. Barron's says cooler heads will prevail, and the end game is closer than most imagine.
Israel wants diplomacy – strikes are unlikely Reuters, 7-31-08, U.S., Israel discuss diplomatic push on Iran, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN3137356320080731?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0 U.S. and Israeli officials discussed diplomatic efforts and financial sanctions to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the State Department said on Thursday. The West accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian program; Iran denies it. There has been speculation that either the United States or Israel could attack Iran's nuclear facilities, though both have said force should be a last resort. The brief statement, issued after talks between senior officials from the United States and Israel in Washington, said nothing about the possibility of using force against Iran. "The United States and Israel share deep concern about Iran's nuclear program, and the two delegations discussed steps to strengthen diplomatic efforts and financial measures to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability," the statement said. It gave no details of the measures discussed. "We also reaffirmed our strong mutual determination to counter Iran's support for terrorism," said the statement, which the State Department said was being issued by both the United States and Israel. Western powers gave Iran two weeks from July 19 to respond to their offer to hold off on imposing more U.N. sanctions on Iran if Tehran would freeze any expansion of its nuclear work. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday Iran would press ahead with its nuclear path. Israel is believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, though it has never confirmed having nuclear weapons. Israel officially maintains that it will not be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons in the region. The U.S.-Israeli talks were part of regular consultations between the two countries known as the "strategic dialogue." The delegations were led by U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Bill Burns, and Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz. Mofaz is considered a possible successor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who plans to quit after his party chooses a new leader in September. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in New York this week that tough sanctions should be used to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but added that no options should be excluded.
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No Strikes – Israel and US US and Israel won’t strike Iran David Ignatius, an associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post. He also co-hosts PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues, 8-3-2008; Washington Post, Page B07, 'Bomb Bomb Iran'? Not Likely. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080102872.html Analysts speculate about the danger of a U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran before the Bush administration departs office next January. But if you read the tea leaves carefully, the evidence is actually pointing in the opposite direction. One sign that the diplomatic track is dominant for now is that the administration plans to announce late this month that it will open an interest section in Tehran, a senior official disclosed Thursday. This will be an important symbol, as it will be the first American diplomatic mission in Iran since the U.S. Embassy there was seized in 1979. The official described it as an effort to "reach out to the Iranian people." The Iranian government has long had an interest section in Washington. The administration's wariness of military options is also clear from recent efforts to dissuade Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, traveled to Israel in early June; he was followed in late June by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both officials explained to their Israeli counterparts why the United States believes an attack isn't necessary now, because the Iranians can't yet build a nuclear weapon, and why an attack would damage U.S. national interests. McConnell and Mullen also informed the Israelis that the United States would oppose overflights of Iraqi airspace to attack Iran, an administration official said. The United States has reassured the Iraqi government that it would not approve Israeli overflights, after the Iraqis strongly protested any potential violation of their sovereignty. "We have made our position abundantly clear to the Israelis and indeed to the world, not just in our public statements but in our private conversations, as well," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. Though the administration has often been portrayed as divided over military options against Iran, an official denied there are now any sharp rifts. "There is uniformity across the U.S. government about the way to proceed with Iran," the official said. "Everyone from this White House, including the vice president's office, is in agreement that the military option is not the best option at this point, and we should pursue diplomatic and economic pressures."
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US opposes Israeli Strikes US opposes Israeli strikes on Iran David Ignatius, an associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post. He also co-hosts PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues, 8-3-2008; Washington Post, Page B07, 'Bomb Bomb Iran'? Not Likely. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080102872.html U.S. opposition to an Israeli military strike now is based on four factors, the official said. First, a strike would retard the Iranian nuclear program without destroying it. (One intelligence estimate is that an attack would delay the Iranians by just two months to two years.) Second, a strike would rally support for the unpopular government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he faces growing economic difficulty. Third, an attack would undermine U.S. policy in Iraq, when the United States appears to be making some progress, and in Afghanistan. And, finally, a strike against Iran, as with any military action, would have unpredictable consequences. In evaluating the Iranian nuclear threat, the United States and Israel are using different intelligence. U.S. analysts believe Iran can't produce a bomb before the end of 2009 and probably not until the 2010--2015 time frame, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.
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No Pol Cap Bush’s capital is dead – 7 reasons DAVID LIGHTMAN McClatchy News Service staff writer, 7-20-08, Bush's clout is in a downward spiral, Miami Herald, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/610912.html
The White House wants the American public to think it's on the rebound, scoring important triumphs in Iraq and North Korea and on domestic spying while taking tough stands on oil drilling and relief for homeowners. The White House, the experts and the polls say, however, is wrong. President Bush hasn't begun a comeback. ''All this is pretty much a lot of noise. He's going out with a whimper,'' said Erwin Hargrove, presidential scholar at Vanderbilt University and the author of The Effective President. Adam Warber, professor of political science at Clemson University, had similar thoughts. ''It's very difficult for him now. His public approval is so poor, he doesn't really have a lot of political capital,'' Warber said. Congress is run by Democrats reluctant to give Bush any domestic victories, and his approval ratings have remained at or near a dismal 30 percent for about a year. Bush is the nation's fifth lame duck since the 22nd Amendment limited presidents to two terms, beginning with Harry Truman's successor in 1952. One was Richard Nixon, who resigned because of Watergate-related scandals 19 months into his second term. The others left office with strong approval ratings. Bill Clinton's was 59 percent in a July 2000 Gallup poll. Ronald Reagan's number when he left office was 64 percent. Dwight D. Eisenhower hit 59 percent approval just before stepping down. Bush's achievements, which are fueling the White House PR machine, flow from his recent tendency to compromise more on national security issues. In recent weeks Bush: • Discussed with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki what the White House called ''a general time horizon'' for cutting the number of American troops in Iraq. Bush said he wasn't endorsing timetables, which he has long opposed. • Took North Korea, which he once labeled part of an ''axis of evil,'' off the list of terrorism sponsors and loosened trade sanctions after it agreed to provide details of its nuclear program. • Won congressional approval of $162 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, though only after including new college aid for military veterans that he'd opposed. • Won his bid to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including the controversial provision that could allow immunity for telecommunications firms that participated in warrantless wiretaps. • Ended the executive ban on drilling off most U.S. coastlines. • Tried to reassure the public, in his first news conference since April, that he understood their economic pain and was working to ease it. Bush was upbeat recently as he recalled his recent string of accomplishments. 'People say, `Aw, man, you're running out of time. Nothing's going to happen,' '' he said. He rattled off his list and looked ahead. ''What can we get done?'' he asked. ``We can get good housing legislation done. We can get good energy legislation done. We can get trade bills done. And there's plenty of time to get action with the United States Congress.'' But outside the White House, few were as optimistic. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed Bush's energy policies, saying, ''Really, the president's done nothing.'' His call for more drilling, Reid said, ``underlines and underscores that the main organization he's trying to help are the oil companies.'' Congress needs to approve any end to the drilling ban, and with Democratic leaders opposed, that's unlikely. There are more ominous signs for Bush that his power remains diluted. This week, Congress overrode his veto of Medicare legislation, and in the House of Representatives, Republicans, who fear a rout in November's elections, put some polite distance between themselves and the White House. ''You want the president involved, but in the context of the election, he's not on the ballot,'' said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the House chief deputy Republican whip. ``Our candidates are on the ballot.'' Next week, Congress is expected to consider help for faltering housing markets, including a rescue plan for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some conservative Republicans are wary, saying the bill could become costly to taxpayers. Passage is expected, but it won't come easily. Analysts say that unless the president's approval rating jumps -- unlikely as long as the economy wobbles and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars continue -- his clout is likely to remain diminished. ''It's not clear he's turned anything around, so the current view of him will probably endure for a while,'' said Bruce Buchanan, professor of government at the University of Texas.
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Nuclear Waste costs PC Waste storage makes expanding nuclear power unpopular Marianne Means, past chairman of the National Press Foundation, a founding member of the International Women's Media, April 12, 2001, Bush, Cheney Will Face Wall of Opposition If They Try To Resurrect Nuclear Power, Hearst Newspapers, http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0412-05.htm Vice President Dick Cheney, head of the presidential task force studying our energy needs, favors building new nuclear power plants and he's oddly casual about it. The industry has been moribund in this country since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island more than two decades ago set off fierce emotional resistance to an unreliable technology capable of accidentally spreading deadly radiation. No new plants have been ordered since then. Only 20 percent of our electricity is generated by nuclear power. But President Bush has instructed Cheney to look into the prospect of resurrecting and developing nuclear power as a major part of a broad new energy policy. Cheney argues that modern, improved reactors operate safely, economically and efficiently. "It's one of the safest industries around," he says unequivocally. There remains, however, a little problem of how to dispose of the plants' radioactive waste. Cheney concedes that issue is still unsolved. "If we're going to go forward with nuclear power, we need to find a way to resolve it," he said Sunday in an NBC "Meet The Press" interview.
No state wants to be the repository of the more than 40,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste currently accumulating at 103 commercial reactor sites around the country. This spent fuel is so deadly it can remain a potential threat to public health and safety for thousands of years. A leak could silently contaminate many miles of groundwater that millions of people depend on. In 1987, Congress designated Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas, as the most likely
site to bury the dangerous stuff. But furious Nevada officials, using all their political clout, have thus far managed to fend off final federal approval. Recently they sharply challenged the scientific integrity of a feasibility study that found the location suitable for long-term storage. Former Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., is the author of what the state's congressional delegation calls the "screw Nevada" bill recommending Yucca Mountain. Last December Bush, looking for a friendly Democrat to include in his Cabinet, considered selecting Johnston, now a nuclear industry lobbyist, as secretary of energy. But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., publicly warned that he would rally environmental groups and other nuclear opponents for a classic nomination fight. Reid bluntly said he would "do everything I can" to keep Johnston from the energy post. Johnston wisely withdrew his name from contention. Former Sen. Spencer Abraham, who got the job instead, has been less identified with Nevada's fate but is believed to back its selection for storage as an essential step toward future nuclear power development. An alternate waste site was suggested in Utah on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation. It was promoted as a temporary location for the waste casks for several years until the Yucca Mountain facility can be built. But Utah's political leaders don't want their state to warehouse the waste either. Not for a day. Not for a minute. And conservative Utah has considerable influence with Bush, who has promised to veto any legislation that allows temporary storage. "Nobody wants this waste," acknowledges Frank Murkowski, RAlaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "It is a highly politicized issue. If you throw it up in the air, it is going to come down somewhere." Two places it is not likely to come down are Texas, Bush's home state, and Wyoming, where Cheney grew up from age 13 on. The vice president scowled when he was asked if he would be willing to put the waste in either of those two states. He ducked the issue, echoing Murkowski that "it will have to be put someplace." Environmentalists, already angry at Bush for permitting logging in federal parks and other anti-conservation policy decisions, are preparing for a noisy political battle over the Bush administration's interest in expanding nuclear power. Federal officials estimate that electricity demand will rise 45 percent over the next two decades and require the construction of more than 1,300 new power plants, some of which may be nuclear reactors. No specific plans, however, have yet surfaced. Cheney refused to get into the numbers game, saying only that he would like to see the percentage of electricity produced by nuclear power "go up." The Bush administration figures that the current rush for new energy sources will make nuclear power easier to sell a nervous public than in the past. But they may figure wrong. From time to time, this country goes through a political spasm in which we declare an energy emergency, predicting terrible shortages if we don't do something fast. So far, we have preferred patchwork solutions like voluntary conservation to a growing dependency
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AT: Fuel Efficiency CP doesn’t cost PC Congress and the auto-industry don’t want fuel efficiency regulations NYT, May 18, 2001, A Misguided Energy Proposal, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE1D9113AF93BA25756C0A9679C8B63&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The report is not without value. Though the document was hatched in secret, it could well stimulate an open debate on the country's energy future. More specifically, it proposes some long-overdue capital spending on the country's transmission lines and natural-gas pipeline system. In a nod to the conservationists whom Vice President Dick Cheney has been belittling, it offers hefty tax credits for hybrid cars that run on gasoline and electricity. In addition, the report promises to study possible increases in the fuel economy of the nation's fleet of cars and light trucks -- though nobody really expects Mr. Bush to risk any political capital on changes that the automobile industry opposes and Congress itself has refused to make.
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Yucca – Costs PC Repealing waste limitations on Yucca would collapse Bush’s political capital Marianne Means, past chairman of the National Press Foundation, a founding member of the International Women's Media, April 12, 2001, Bush, Cheney Will Face Wall of Opposition If They Try To Resurrect Nuclear Power, Hearst Newspapers, http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0412-05.htm
No state wants to be the repository of the more than 40,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste currently accumulating at 103 commercial reactor sites around the country. This spent fuel is so deadly it can remain a potential threat to public health and safety for thousands of years. A leak could silently contaminate many miles of groundwater that millions of people depend on. In 1987, Congress designated Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas, as the most likely site to bury the dangerous stuff. But furious Nevada officials, using all their political clout, have thus far managed to fend off final federal approval. Recently they sharply challenged the scientific integrity of a feasibility study that found the location suitable for long-term storage. Former Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., is the author of what the state's congressional delegation calls the "screw Nevada" bill recommending Yucca Mountain. Last December Bush, looking for a friendly Democrat to include in his Cabinet, considered selecting Johnston, now a nuclear industry lobbyist, as secretary of energy. But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., publicly warned that he would rally environmental groups and other nuclear opponents for a classic nomination fight. Reid bluntly said he would "do everything I can" to keep Johnston from the energy post. Johnston wisely withdrew his name from contention. Former Sen. Spencer Abraham, who got the job instead, has been less identified with Nevada's fate but is believed to back its selection for storage as an essential step toward future nuclear power development. An alternate waste site was suggested in Utah on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation. It was promoted as a temporary location for the waste casks for several years until the Yucca Mountain facility can be built. But Utah's political leaders don't want their state to warehouse the waste either. Not for a day. Not for a minute. And conservative Utah has considerable influence with Bush, who has promised to veto any legislation that allows temporary storage. "Nobody wants this waste," acknowledges Frank Murkowski, RAlaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "It is a highly politicized issue. If you throw it up in the air, it is going to come down somewhere." Two places it is not likely to come down are Texas, Bush's home state, and Wyoming, where Cheney grew up from age 13 on. The vice president scowled when he was asked if he would be willing to put the waste in either of those two states. He ducked the issue, echoing Murkowski that "it will have to be put someplace."
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Yucca – Dems oppose Dems won’t support Yucca – Reid and elections John Gorenfeld, Freelance Journalist, 11-13-2007, Nevada's Clout in the Primaries Puts the Spotlight on Nuclear Politics, Alternet, http://www.alternet.org/environment/63261/?page=1
Any Democrat who wanted to support Yucca would have to deal with Harry Reid, the party's Senate Majority Leader and the responsible party for the early caucus date. He was calling Bush a liar over Yucca long before he opposed him on Iraq. "I have spent 20 years fighting the absurd idea that massive quantities of deadly nuclear waste can be transported across thousands of miles," Reid has said. And Bush, he told the New Yorker, "started out on a real bad foot with me because of Yucca Mountain." The president had run promising to consider "sound science" before supporting Yucca, but now signed off on the project rather than wait. In 2002, Reid told Bush in an Oval Office meeting: "You sold out on this." Six years later,
the next step to establishing Yucca just may play a role in the 2008 general election. It's a license application that will fall smack in the middle of the presidential race next summer. The U.S. government will consider a 10,000page application and decide whether to grant permission to go ahead.
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Reid key to OCS OCS vote will pass now if Senator Reid agrees Wall Street Journal, 7-15-2008, Reid Faces More Heat To Ease Oil-Drilling Ban, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121617044402856421.html?mod=googlenews_wsj WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
faced more pressure to ease a congressional ban on expanded offshore drilling for oil, as both Republicans and Democrats sought to show they are responding to high energy prices in an election year. Sen. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said he is ready to move a bill targeting what he called "greedy speculators," which would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission greater authority to regulate energy futures, particularly over-the-counter swaps markets and foreign exchanges operating in the U.S. But Republicans said they may try to block that legislation if it doesn't include measures to allow new domestic oil production. Sen. Reid suggested Tuesday he might agree to at least allow votes on the drilling issue. "We're happy to take a look at a number of different approaches," he said. "If we get on to the speculation bill, we'll take a look at ways to amend that." With several polls showing a rise in public support for more drilling offshore, Republicans are hammering away at the issue, starting with seeking to open long-closed areas on the outer continental shelf, where the government says an estimated 18 billion barrels of oil and several trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie undiscovered.
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Military Link – costs PC Modernizing the military costs political capital BBC News, 24 May, 2001, Bush seeks 'military revolution,' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1349698.stm But changes in military technology are also shaping the challenges of the future. More accurate and longer-range weaponry is proliferating. New reconnaissance systems promise to give commanders an unrivalled view of any future battlefield. The tempo and range of future combat may be very different. The US remains the technological leader, but it needs to use this advantage in new ways. Vested interests Fundamental change, though, in the Pentagon is a matter as much of culture as of planning. Each of America's armed forces represents a huge bureaucracy of vested interests. The US needs more joint effort between the services and less duplication. To take on such interests, President Bush has chosen a strong team, not least Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a veteran Pentagon insider. This administration is full of inside military knowledge; from Colin Powell a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - at the State Department, and Vice-President Dick Cheney, a former defence secretary.
Fundamental defence reform is not going to be an easy brief. It will require an extraordinary investment of political capital. Some defence experts believe that Mr Bush may have much more success in the nuclear field, where there may be a significant shift away from regarding Russia as the benchmark for constructing America's own nuclear forces. Painful choices But in the conventional field, where every weapons system has its supporters in both the services and on Capitol Hill, difficult choices will quickly become painful choices. The bottom line, as ever, is the dollar. Mr Bush has given strong backing to missile defence, which could eat up funding. Defence reform is going to need new money. Some $30 to $35bn in additional money may be needed in the 2002 fiscal year. But that will not be enough to bring about the military revolution that Mr Bush has effectively promised.
Both Dems and Republicans hate military spending Elana Schor is a staff reporter for Guardian America, 2-4-2008, Democrats criticise Bush budget for fudging Iraq costs http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/04/usa.elanaschor George Bush released his annual budget plan today, prompting disdain from congressional Democrats who chastised the president for again fudging the costs of the Iraq war and tax cuts in order to claim he could erase the US deficit. The
$3.1 trillion budget would increase US military spending for the 11th straight year while slicing about $200bn from the social security and Medicare programs that aid older Americans. The budget deficit under Bush's proposal would balloon to $410bn this year - more than twice as much as 2007 - before achieving balance in 2012. That claim of a balanced budget hinges on only $70bn in spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, an estimate that even White House aides acknowledge they will exceed during the next fiscal year. The Bush budget also fails to account for the growth of the alternative minimum tax, which Congress must adjust every year to avoid leaving middle-class Americans with a huge tax bill. By contrast, Bush assumes that the Democrats who control Congress would cement his legacy by permanently extending individual and corporate tax cuts, which are likely to expire for the wealthiest taxpayers. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid, leading a chorus of alarm in his party, called the Bush budget "fiscally irresponsible and highly deceptive". "In the face of a
looming recession, the president's budget does nothing to strengthen our economy, and fails to respond to the real problems facing middle-class families," the Democrat said in a statement. Barack Obama, hoping to win the Democrats' presidential nod this spring, used the budget's rosy projection of indefinite tax cuts to hammer the Republicans' likely nominee. "The fact that John McCain, who once opposed these tax cuts, now embraces them, tells the American people all they need to know about the choice they face in this election," Obama said through a spokesman. The presidential budget traditionally serves as a guide for Congress in its decisions over spending levels for government programmes. But Democrats have neither willingness nor compelling reason to meet Bush halfway during his last year in office. The majority party is likely to set separate priorities, focusing more on social programmes than the White House. Revealing the extent of Bush's diminished political capital, even members of his own party gave the budget little credence. Judd Gregg, the senior Republican on the Senate budget committee, released a statement that pointed out where the president fell short. "Any budget, to be effective, needs to address the unsustainable growth of entitlement spending, which is the single biggest factor contributing to the long-term fiscal crisis we face," Gregg said. "A 35
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Winning Iraq – Increases PC Winning in Iraq will increase Bush’s capital Don Luskin is Chief Investment Officer for Trend Macrolytics, an economics research and consulting service, April 12, 2003 Bush's Next War to Liberate the American Economy, Capitalism Magazine, http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2676 To do that will require enormous political capital. On the verge of a spectacular victory in Iraq, Bush may have that capital within his reach. But it ain't over till it's over, and Bush is entirely aware that while the war in Iraq rages, the American public and American markets will be on an emotional roller coaster. But his priorities are clear. He told us, "I'm not going to let the stock market drive the war. Tommy Franks drives the war." But if this war concludes as favorably as it looks like it just might, then Bush is going to emerge with all the political capital he needs. And he told us that he's committed to spending it. He told us that a president "is only here for a short while," and has to spend his political capital on "big projects." For the economy, Bush told us that means no less than a vision to "forever change this country into 'entrepreneurial heaven.'’
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Military Hydrogen – Popular Supporting hydrogen production for the military is popular John Dizard, staff writer Financial Times UK, Jan 31 2005, Bush, Iraq and the hydrogen economy There can be no one left who thinks that yesterday's elections in Iraq will have ended the political instability in the Middle East. It is now assumed even by the US military leadership that the forces in Iraq cannot be significantly decreased for years. There is going
to be more and more political pressure to achieve energy independence rather than face the prospect of endless military occupations of sources of oil. The closest thing to an independence plan produced by the Bush administration or the energy industry is the hydrogen economy. The idea is to convert our vehicles, ships, and aircraft to burn the pollution free fuel in various forms. It would solve a problem, but it could take 20 years or so.
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Nuclear Power – GOP and lobbies like Nuclear plants are popluar with the GOP and big businesses Meir Carasso Ph.D. degree in Engineering from the University of California in Berkeley energy policy formulation and analysis he worked for the U.S. and California. governments, 2005, Nuclear Power Looks Worse Than Ever, Daily Camera, http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0430-24.htmz President Bush
is promoting the use of nuclear power plants to generate electricity. It seems a political choice. Investing in nuclear power plants can be attempted only by very large corporations, of the kind that are in his support base. They belong to a very exclusive big-money club, and there are many billions of dollars at stake. But to belong, one also has to be willing to forget Three Mile Island, to forget market economics, nuclear proliferation, radioactive waste and, in particular, to forget nuclear terrorism. The nuclear industry, unlike, say, the automobile industry, is not a selfsufficient, commercial industry. From its inception in the late 1950's, the commercial nuclear power enterprise in this country developed a dual personality, as it were. It is schizophrenic. It had to be, and is entirely dependent on agencies of the federal government. The reason is that what makes a nuclear power plant "nuclear" is its fissionable fuel, and nuclear fuel is radioactive. Because radioactive materials are toxic, and concerns of national security, the government today has to be a party to every phase of nuclear power generation, from beginning to end.
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Nuclear – Popular (Pub, Dems) Nuclear power is popular with dems and public – safer now, and overrides Reid’s opposition James Hoare, Environment & Climate News, February 1, 2007, Democrat Group Calls for More Nuclear Power, The Heartland Institute, http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20509 Nuclear power offers a safe and economical way to meet anticipated growth in American energy demand, according to an October 2006 report by the Progressive Policy Institute, a policy arm of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The report, "A Progressive Energy Platform," praises nuclear power as a key weapon against asserted global climate change and air quality concerns. "Nuclear power holds great potential to be an integral part of a diversified energy portfolio for America," the report states. "It produces no greenhouse gas emissions, so it can help clean up the air and combat climate change." New Technological Advances Key to the DLC's support for nuclear power are technological advances that substantially improve on an already impressive safety and environmental record. "New plant designs promise to produce power more safely and economically than first-generation facilities," the report explains. "For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has certified three new designs that would use significantly fewer pumps, pipes, valves, and cables than first-generation facilities. "That will reduce the plants' complexity, making them easier to inspect and maintain," the report continues. "From a safety perspective, the new plants rely on natural forces such as gravity, natural circulation, and condensation, assuring safe shutdown even in the event of an accident." The report also notes further advances in nuclear plant design. "In addition to these three new approved designs," the report adds, "at least four other designs may soon win NRC approval. Among these is the promising modular, 'pebble bed' reactor design. As the name suggests, these smaller plants would use hundreds of thousands of uranium pebbles rather than large cores to generate power. As researchers at MIT recently concluded, these pebbles burn more completely than their traditional counterparts." Deregulation Needed The report stresses, however, that technological advances such as pebble bed reactors require a great deal of time to navigate through regulatory processes and actually get built. As a result, the report encourages Democrats to take action now to remove regulatory hurdles that slow the development and construction process. "It will take time to bring these next-generation facilities online. Progressives should support efforts to expedite the process," the report urges. "We certainly welcome the Progressive Policy Institute support," Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Kerekes said. "It reflects the fact that there is considerable bipartisan support for nuclear energy and there has been such support for a long time. "We anticipate this report will have a positive impact among Democrats and among citizens as a whole," Kerekes added. "Support for clean, safe, and economical nuclear power continues to build all across America." Political Landscape in Flux The DLC's support for nuclear power may undermine efforts by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to block completion of the Yucca Mountain storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. On December 7 Reid's clerk, Drew Wilson, told attendees at a nuclear power conference that Reid "is not going to change" his opposition to Yucca Mountain and that he will do whatever he can to block legislation that would assist completion of the facility. "It won't be moving for long if the majority leader is controlling the agenda," Wilson said of any proposed Yucca Mountain legislation. While the project "is not proceeding at the pace we would like," Kerekes said, he expects DLC support for nuclear power to minimize Reid's influence in blocking Yucca Mountain progress. "Harry Reid has acknowledged in the past that he alone cannot kill the program," said Kerekes. "There is broad public support for nuclear power," Kerekes continued. "And until Yucca comes online, used fuel must be stored in many places around the country, against the wishes of citizens who desire one safe, centralized storage facility."
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Nuclear – McCain McCain and GOP control nuclear power – they support it strongly compared to Obama and dems David Kestenbaum, Correspondent, Science Desk, July 21, 2008, NPR, Nuclear Power A Thorny Issue For Candidates, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92690120 Nuclear power doesn't usually make for an applause line in a stump speech, but it has come up on the campaign trail. Both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain see it as a way to combat climate change, though they've sometimes chosen their words with care. Of the two, McCain is the most comfortable with the topic. As a Navy pilot, he landed on aircraft
carriers, which today are essentially floating nuclear-powered cities. McCain calls nuclear "one of the cleanest, safest and most reliable energy sources on Earth." "If we want to arrest global warming, then nuclear energy is a powerful, powerful ally in that cause," he said in a May speech. McCain's enthusiasm for nuclear has put him in unusual territory for a Republican: He's been praising the French, who generate 80 percent of their power from nuclear. Obama's position is also somewhat unusual for a Democrat: He thinks nuclear power might be a good idea. The question came up during an early Democratic primary debate. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards went first, saying he did not favor nuclear power. Obama went next. "I actually think we should explore nuclear power as part of the mix," he said, before pivoting to solar energy, a much safer topic.
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AT: Dems hate Nuclear (elections/agenda) Dems are ambivalent on the issue Dallas Morning News, 1-27-08, ELIZABETH SOUDER, Nuclear plants become a factor in elections, http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/national/stories/DN-nukes_27bus.ART.State.Edition1.2af68e5.html Democratic voters haven't come to a consensus either. "It's clearly a mixed bag," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, head of the Texas office for Public Citizen, which opposes nuclear power. "Even people who were strong anti-nukers are beginning to have that conversation again." Dean Rindy, head of Rindy Miller Media, a Democratic political consulting firm in Austin, said most people, including the presidential candidates, haven't been forced to choose a position on nuclear power yet. So even the most connected politicos can't predict which way the party will go. "There hasn't been a lot of passionate debate on this in Democratic caucuses. The debate is just beginning, really," said Mr. Rindy, who opposes nuclear power and worked on environmental efforts surrounding Barton Springs in Austin. It's difficult to categorize the liberals who support nuclear power and those who do not. It's not necessarily young students conscious of climate change vs. aging anti-nuke hippies. And it's not always environmental activists vs. business types. Tony Kreindler, a spokesman for Environmental Defense, said his group reconsidered its anti-nuclear stance a few years ago. Now the environmental advocacy group says nuclear power is an important lowcarbon energy option, though members still worry about safety. The dividing line seems to be between people who are motivated to compromise with the energy industry and those who want to devote resources solely to renewable power. Uranium used in nuclear plants isn't a renewable fuel. "Members of the political class, particularly senators and congressmen who have those nuclear facilities in their districts, are customarily supportive of nuclear power," said Mr. Freeman of the Nuclear Energy Institute. All three top Democratic candidates have received donations from employees of nuclear power companies. The amount tends to match the candidate's acceptance of nuclear power and tends to be higher than what Republican candidates have received from the same companies.
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NASA – PC links Funding NASA costs pol cap Andrew Lawler, senior writer with Science Magazine and Freelance Journalist, 12 December 2003, Science: Vol. 302. no. 5652, p. 1873HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT: Bush Plan for NASA: Watch This Space, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5652/1873?ck=nck Congressional aides and other observers warn that any new mission will have to fit into an agency budget already strained by repairs to the space shuttle, the completion of the space station, and a new series of technologically advanced planetary probes, not to mention development of a shuttle alternative. NASA should first resolve the problems facing the shuttle and station systems, they say. "We've gotten so far into a hole in the past 30 years, it will take a lot of money and political capital to get us out before you go searching for something new," says George Washington University political scientist John Logsdon, a member of the panel that reviewed the Columbia accident.
Expanding NASA costs pol cap – Columbia, war on terror, and deficits Andrew Lawler, senior writer with Science Magazine and Freelance Journalist, 12 December 2003, Science: Vol. 302. no. 5652, p. 1873HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT: Bush Plan for NASA: Watch This Space, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5652/1873?ck=nck U.S. space enthusiasts are blessed and cursed by President John F. Kennedy's 1961 call to go to the moon by the end of the decade. Although his bold vision was realized, other presidents have had less luck winning support for human space flight. President Ronald
Reagan's 1984 proposal to build a space station has taken vastly more time, money, and political capital than anticipated, and President George H. W. Bush's 1989 plan to return to the moon and land on Mars never left the ground. Now Bush's son is pondering whether to propose a dramatic new direction for NASA in the wake of February's Columbia accident. Sources say that a small team of senior White House and federal agency officials has finished work on a tightly held set of options for the president. But in a Washington focused on the war against terrorism, rising federal deficits, and the 2004 election campaign, any human space flight proposal faces skepticism--or worse. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has already battled skeptics in the Administration--and lost. White House officials say that O'Keefe pushed this fall for a dramatic increase in the agency's $15 billion budget to begin work that would ultimately lead to human Mars missions. But that high price tag--$5 billion annually for at least the next 4 years, according to those sources--was
rejected as unrealistic.
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NASA - PC Link Funding NASA costs political capital Frank Sietzen Jr., UPI staff writer, 2004, NASA Faces Final Budget Debate, UPI, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-04zm.html Washington DC (UPI) Sep 16, 2004 If NASA's battle over its fiscal year 2005 budget were a baseball game, it now would be in bottom of the eighth inning with score tied -- and Congress at bat. Having failed to win House of Representatives approval for funding of President Bush's ambitious plan to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars, NASA now faces a similar battle next week in the Senate. There, the appropriations subcommittee that reviews the budgets of the Veterans Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and independent agencies -- including NASA -likewise may not approve new funds for the Bush space plan. If this happens, and Congress fails to include the $866 million requested by the administration in its final legislation, it would effectively kill all of the new space projects the president has sought. This latest cliff-hanger was triggered last week by tight spending limits imposed on subcommittee appropriators. Shortfalls in the VA, housing and loan-guarantee budget areas have left the chairman, Sen. Christopher S. Kit Bond, R-Mo., with insufficient room to cover the needs of the agencies under his purview. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe once told United Press International he considered these maneuvers a political game of chicken. He may well be right about that. At stake are potential billions of dollars in development contracts for the U.S. aerospace firms that would design and manufacture the new space vehicles, equipment, robots and launching rockets for the Bush space plan. NASA already has started the countdown to release of a January 2005 request for proposals for the new moonship -- called the crew exploration vehicle or CEV -as well as the booster rocket to lift it into space. Last week, the agency awarded some $27 million in study contracts to 11 firms -- including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and smaller businesses and non-profits -- to start planning the lunar missions and related scientific research programs. Those funds came out of unspent money remaining in fiscal year 2004, which ends Sept. 30. If the appropriations bill actually moves to the Senate floor for a vote, it could trigger the first serious political debate about space spending since the 1989 and 1990 fights over the International Space Station. Those funding battles, which occurred under President George H.W. Bush, came within a single vote of canceling the station before the administration prevailed. What was canceled, however, was another Bush 41 space initiative -- a dream by the current president's father to send astronauts back to the moon and onward to Mars. The idea was less detailed and developed than the project proposed by the current president, and it failed to pass either house of Congress and eventually was abandoned. Regarding the latest funding effort, O'Keefe -- himself a former Senate staffer -- could forestall the budget ax if he manages to prevent the appropriations bill from receiving a vote on the Senate floor and exploiting its tightly constrained calendar. Time is running out before the pre-election congressional recess, so any unfinished business would be held over until the post-election, lame-duck Congress returns. Such a strategy would mirror what happened in the House, where members of the coinciding appropriations subcommittee killed Bush's new space exploration budget, but failed to move the corpse to the floor. Majority Leader, Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, has vowed to block the bill from getting to the floor if it does not contain the requested money. Further upping the ante, White House officials have let it be known the president would veto any space spending bill that excluded funds for his new project. O'Keefe reminded senators on the appropriations subcommittee of this fact last week. O'Keefe also might have one more budget trick up his sleeve: If either the House or the Senate fails to approve a separate space appropriations bill, he might urge NASA's supporters in Congress to attempt to link it with other, uncompleted spending measures in a so-called omnibus bill. It might even be possible, under this strategy, to add more funds in the House-Senate conference than either side had approved separately. The move would be tricky, however, and it could be quite costly for O'Keefe in terms of political capital.
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GOP hates Natives GOP opposes bills supporting natives Tanasi Journal, 17 August 2007, Native American Community Shocked by Senate Republican Steering Committee Opposition, http://www.tanasijournal.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=480&Itemid=1&ed=68 Blow after blow, the U.S. Senate Republican Steering Committee continues to block all legislation that benefits Indian people. The Senate Republican Steering Committee is a small group of Senators who have been working together to put secret "holds" on all legislation benefiting Indian tribes and Indian people. Indian Country has had strong ties to the Republican Party through the Indian Self-Determination Policy and respect for the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly recognizes the treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, religious freedom, and the shared values of federalism that encourage local decision-making. Tribal leaders and the Republican Party share strong interests in law enforcement, economic development, energy, the military, veterans, and many other issues. "At first we thought that it was coincidence that so many bills on Native issues were
being blocked by members of the Republican Steering Committee," said National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) President Joe A. Garcia. "But it is clear now that it is not. NCAI is a non-partisan organization that has built successful relationships on both sides of the aisle for many decades. It is a very small number of Republican Senators, but we must address this obstructionism that stops all legislation no matter how bi-partisan and non-controversial."
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AT: No spillover Vote Switching is Real – ideology is minimal Bond & Fleisher, Professor in Political Science - Texas A&M & Professor in Political Science - Fordham 19 96 (Jon R. and Richard The President in Legislation) pg 54
In a previous study of presidential-congressional relations from Eisenhower to Ford, we found that ideological conflict between the president and members of Congress was associated with lower support. In general, as ideological differences increase, the president tends to lose support from members of both parties at about the same rate, although support from the opposition is lower at all levels of ideological conflict (Bond and Fleisher 1980, 75). Thus ideological forces in Congress often cause the formation of bipartisan coalitions to support or oppose the president's policy preferences. These ideological forces help explain why majority presidents have only a limited advantage over minority presidents in building majority support for their positions in Congress. Majority presidents inevitably experience defections of partisans who have ideologies in conflict with theirs. Minority presidents, on the other hand, can frequently build working majorities composed of their partisan base and like-minded members of the opposition. While political values shared between the president and members of Congress provide an important linkage source, the effects of ideology are limited for several reasons. First, most members of Congress are pragmatic politicians who do not have views and preferences at the extremes of a liberal-conservative continuum. Because the typical American voter is not strongly ideological, most representatives' electoral self-interest is probably best served by avoiding ideological extremes. As noted above, ideology is a less important voting cue for moderates than it is for ideological extremists (Kingdon 1981, 268). Second, many votes that may be important to the president do not involve ideological issues. Distributive or "porkbarrel" programs, for example, typically do not produce ideological divisions. Even conservatives who want to cut domestic spending and liberals who want to reduce defense spending work to protect domestic and defense programs in their districts. Presidents who attempt to tamper with these programs are likely to find few friends in Congress, as President Carter discovered when he opposed several water projects in 1977, and as President Reagan discovered when he vetoed the highway bill in 1987. Finally, ideological voting blocs are relatively informal coalitions composed of individuals who have similar values. The "conservative coalition" of Republicans and southern Democrats, for example, appears on certain votes and sometimes has a significant influence on the outcome of floor votes (Shelley 1983; Brady and Bullock 1980; Manley 1973). But this
coalition of conservatives has no formal organization with elected leaders to serve as a communication and information center. Although there are several ideologies.
Political capital spills over by controlling spin – War on terror proves Ruy Teixeira, Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and American Progress, Spring 2007, Moving Left? Bush’s Decline and American Liberalism, Dissent Magazine, http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=779 Furthermore, surely no
single issue has contributed more to the Bush administration’s ability to pursue a hard-right agenda than the war on terror—the political capital afforded by that issue has been the main reason Bush has been, until recently, so successful in turning the country to the right. But now that political capital has evaporated precisely because of the Iraq War. Indeed, the most recent polls suggest that it will not be long before Bush’s approval rating on handling terrorism dips below 40 percent, an extraordinary development. This lack of political capital means that the GOP now
has few options left with which to push its right-wing policies on a less and less interested public. That, in turn, means that progressive policy views held by the public can more easily come to the fore and push the political debate to the left.
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No Spillover Bush doesn’t believe capital spills over between issues Andrew, LEE The Rose Institute of State & Local Government – Claremont McKenna College – Presented at the Georgia Political Science Association 2005 Conference “Invest or Spend?:Political capital and Statements of Administration Policy in the First Term of the George W. Bush Presidency,” http://as.clayton.edu/trachtenberg/2005%20Proceedings%20Lee.pdf] Instead of investing political capital, the president may spend it on an initiative. When spending political capital, the president does not necessarily expect higher approval ratings. President Clinton’s first term actions to balance the budget and normalize trade with China did not yield returns. In fact, balancing the budget in 1993 was a reason for the change of congressional control from the Democrats to the Republicans (Panetta 2002, 201-02). In President Bush’s first term, he accrued a large amount of capital from the September 11th attacks, and subsequently spent a substantial portion pursuing the Iraq war. Political capital is not equal in all policy areas. Commenting on President Clinton’s term, President George W. Bush said, “I felt like he tried to spend capital on issues that he didn't have any capital on at first, like health care” (quoted in Suellentrop 2004). In spending political capital, the president diminishes his political strength by initiating or pushing a policy proposal with no intent on return. A president can spend capital for noble goals such as a balanced budget, the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime, or to veto legislation. The theory of political capital as it relates to SAPs is that presidents are more likely to spend political capital through a presidential veto because they have the power to do so. In times of increased political capital, the relative strength of SAP wording will also increase because the president has greater flexibility to take stands on particular issues. This analysis is a case study of the first Bush term’s adherence to this hypothesis.
The president cannot direct leadership towards already prioritized Congress. Bond & Fleisher, Professor in Political Science - Texas A&M & Professor in Political Science - Fordham 1996 (Jon R. and Richard The President in Legislation) pg 33
Presidential leadership skill operates at the margin because "members of Congress have their own political needs and priorities, which the president, whoever he is, is mostly powerless to affect" (King 1983, 265). In summary, the literature identifies political parties, political ideology, popularity with the public, and presidential leadership skill as linkage agents that can serve as sources of presidential support in Congress. Each source is characterized by inherent limitations, and there is no guarantee that the president will be able to exploit the potential advantages to secure the votes he needs. Knowledge of the effects and limitations of the systematic forces that influence congressional behavior provides a foundation for a theory to explain the linkage between the president and Congress. Following is a theoretical framework built upon this knowledge.
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Cap and trade link Cap and trade is unpopular in Congress Josh Patashnik, Harvard Political Review editor-in-chief and former UC member, 6-6-08, Gaming Out Cap-and-Trade in the Next Congress, blog, the New Republic, http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2008/06/06/gaming-out-cap-andtrade-in-the-next-congress.aspx As Brad notes, Lieberman–Warner didn't come close to getting the 60 votes needed for cloture this year. It got 48 votes (roll call here), plus pledges from six more senators who missed the vote but say they would have voted for cloture. So that means it came up six votes short. Where might those votes come from if a similar bill is brought up next year? Obviously, a whip count this far out is very, very rough, but here's some idea. Among the ten senators who missed the vote and didn't pledge to support cloture, there are two Democrats: West Virginia's Robert Byrd and North Dakota's Kent Conrad. Byrd apparently opposed the bill (although his fellow Mountain Stater, Jay Rockefeller, voted for cloture), so getting his vote seems unlikely. Conrad was apparently on the fence, and his home-state comrade, Byron Dorgan, voted no. Among the Republicans who didn't vote, only Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter seems like the type who might be persuaded to vote for cloture; perhaps Judd Gregg, who will face re-election in 2010 in environmentally conscious New Hampshire, is also a possibility. If, say, two of those four end up supporting cloture, proponents of cap-and-trade would have to pick up four votes from the "no" group without losing any supporters (it's conceivable that someone like Norm Coleman or Elizabeth Dole might suddenly have a change of heart when they're not facing tough re-election fights). Wayne Allard of Colorado and Pete Domenici of New Mexico could well be replaced by the two Udalls. Then you'd have to either cobble together two more votes from among the four Democrats who voted no--Dorgan, Tim Johnson (S.D.), Mary Landrieu (La.), and Sherrod Brown (Ohio); win an upset victory over someone like Texas's John Cornyn or Mississippi's Roger Wicker; or pick up a stray Republican or two (probably by bribing them with pork). All in all, it
looks like it's going to be an uphill fight unless the occupant of the White House decides to expend some political capital on it. It probably also wouldn't hurt if gas prices went down in the interim, taking some of the emotional edge off the vote, but what are the odds of that?
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Updates Updates........................................................................................................................................................................................................1 Econ Low.....................................................................................................................................................................................................2 OCS – Won’t pass - Pelosi...........................................................................................................................................................................3 OCS – AT: Pelosi.........................................................................................................................................................................................4 OCS – AT: ↓ Oil...........................................................................................................................................................................................5 OCS – Pelosi Key........................................................................................................................................................................................6 OCS – Won’t Pass........................................................................................................................................................................................7 Global Warming !.........................................................................................................................................................................................8 C&T elections link.......................................................................................................................................................................................9 Auto Industry Weak...................................................................................................................................................................................10 Bioterror Now/Biodefense fails.................................................................................................................................................................11 No Bioterror – Research/Biodefense solves..............................................................................................................................................12 CA State DA Brink.....................................................................................................................................................................................13 (Solar/Wind) Tax Credits – GOP hates......................................................................................................................................................14 2NC OCS Tax Credit Tradeoff Link..........................................................................................................................................................15 AT: Prolif Deterrence (Middle East)......................................................................................................................................................16 Econ = Dead...............................................................................................................................................................................................17 Econ Low...................................................................................................................................................................................................18 Econ Collapse = Slow................................................................................................................................................................................19 Economy = Resilient .................................................................................................................................................................................20 Econ Collapse Inevitable...........................................................................................................................................................................21 Econ Low/AT: Fed.....................................................................................................................................................................................22 Econ Brink.................................................................................................................................................................................................23 Econ - Growing..........................................................................................................................................................................................24 New York Economy – Low........................................................................................................................................................................25 No Israel Strikes.........................................................................................................................................................................................26 No Strikes – Israel and US.........................................................................................................................................................................27 US opposes Israeli Strikes.........................................................................................................................................................................28 No Pol Cap.................................................................................................................................................................................................29
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Econ Low Economy declining now – unemployment and slowing trade New York Times 8-1-08, Michael M. Grynbaum and Floyd Norris contributed reporting, More Arrows Seen Pointing to a Recession, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/business/01econ.html The American economy expanded more slowly than expected from April to June, the government reported Thursday, while numbers for the last three months of 2007 were revised downward to show a contraction — the first official slide backward since the last recession in 2001. Economists construed the tepid growth in the second quarter, combined with a surge in claims for unemployment benefits, as a clear indication that the economy remains mired in the weeds of a downturn. Many said the data increased the likelihood that a recession began late last year. The next major piece of data comes Friday, when the government is to release its monthly snapshot of the job market. Analysts expect the report to show a loss of 75,000 jobs, signifying the seventh straight month of declines. “We already knew the economy was weak, and now you have both a negative growth number coupled with job losses,” said Dean Baker, a director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. “There’s a lot of real bad times to come.” President Bush zeroed in on the positive growth in the second quarter — a 1.9 percent annual rate of expansion, compared with an anticipated 2.3 percent rate. That follows growth of 0.9 percent in the first quarter. He claimed success for the $100 billion in tax rebates sent out by the government this year in a bid to spur spending, along with $52 billion in tax cuts for businesses. “We got some positive news today,” the president said in West Virginia, addressing a coal industry trade association. “It’s not as good as we’d like it to be but I want to remind you a few months ago, there were predictions, and — that the economy would shrink this quarter, not grow.” But the snapshot of disappointing economic growth released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday morning provided no comfort to Wall Street, where a broad sell-off commenced. By the end of business, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 206 points to close at 11,378, a drop of nearly 2 percent. The rout may have been explained in part by significant changes the government made to historical data on the profitability of American businesses. According to the revised numbers, corporate profits earned in the United States by American companies rose much more swiftly than previously recorded from 2005 through 2007, making the recent decline appear much steeper. That the economy grew at all this spring is a testament to two bright spots — increased consumer spending fueled by the tax rebates, and the continuing expansion of American exports. Consumer spending, which amounts to 70 percent of the economy, grew at a 1.5 percent annual rate between April and June, after growing at a meager 0.9 percent clip in the previous quarter. “Clearly the tax rebates did give some oomph to the economy,” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at the research and trading firm ITG. Exports expanded at a 9.2 percent annual pace in the second quarter, up from 5.1 percent in the first three months of the year. Foreign sales have been lubricated by the weak dollar, which makes American-made goods cheaper on world markets. Adding to the improving trade picture, imports dropped by 6.6 percent, as Americans tightened their spending. Imports are subtracted from economic growth, so the effect was positive. Over all, trade added 2.42 percentage points to the growth rate from April to June. Without that contribution, the economy would have contracted. But many economists are dubious that consumer spending and exports can keep growing robustly in the face of substantial challenges that are now entrenched in the United States and are gathering force in many other major economies. Japan and much of Europe appear headed into downturns, damping demand for Americanmade products. “The trade improvement doesn’t look sustainable,” said Jan Hatzius, an economist at Goldman Sachs in New York. “In an environment where the global economy is clearly slowing, you’re not being able to get that export growth in future quarters.”
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OCS – Won’t pass - Pelosi Pelosi will block OCS passage despite overwhelming pressure Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau, 7-31-08, Despite the pressure, Pelosi stays firm: No vote on offshore oil drilling, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/31/MNSH122TA3.DTL For weeks, pressure has been mounting in Congress to approve more domestic oil drilling, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has held the line, using her power to block a vote on offshore drilling. President Bush has made almost daily calls for Democratic leaders to take action. House GOP leaders, citing a new poll showing that a slim majority of Californians now favor offshore drilling, issued a release today saying "even (Pelosi's) own California neighbors oppose her efforts to block new drilling far off American coasts." GOP lawmakers are so disgruntled they're urging Bush to deny Congress its August break by calling a special session on energy. Even some Democrats are getting antsy, fearing the party's stance could hurt in the fall elections. But Pelosi, who has opposed offshore drilling throughout her two decades in Congress, insists opening new areas to drilling won't lower gas prices in the short-term. She believes a vote would only help the GOP blame Democrats for high gas prices. "I will not ... give the administration an excuse for its failure," Pelosi said at an end-of-session roundtable interview today. Republicans have put a bull's eye on the federal moratorium on coastal drilling, which has kept most of the East and West coasts off limits to new oil rigs since 1982. Bush announced earlier this month that he would lift the presidential moratorium on drilling, and the GOP is now seeking to lift the congressional ban. Pelosi drew derision from her critics for telling Politico this week that she was blocking a vote on offshore drilling because "I'm trying to save the planet." But she elaborated on that theme today, saying she sees energy independence and fighting global warming as "my flagship issue." She said she would use her power to resist a policy that could increase the country's oil dependency. "I'm not going to be diverted for a political tactic from a course of action that has a big-picture view - a vision about an energy independent future that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels ... and focuses on those renewables that are protective of the environment," she said. Republicans are quietly gleeful at Pelosi's tactics, which have only breathed more life into an issue the GOP is clinging to as a lifeline in an otherwise grim year for the party. Some House Republicans said today that they will ask Bush to order a special session of Congress in August if lawmakers adjourn this week, as expected, without voting on drilling. While a special session is unlikely, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, made clear that his party plans to use the issue as a bludgeon against Democrats throughout the five-week August recess. "A solid majority of Americans want us to have more drilling for more American-made energy, and they aren't going to take no for an answer," Boehner said today. "Speaker Pelosi, Senators (Harry) Reid and (Barack) Obama are defying the will of the American people, and they're doing so at their own risk."
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OCS – AT: Pelosi OCS drilling will override Pelosi – 2/3 majority Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau, 7-31-08, Despite the pressure, Pelosi stays firm: No vote on offshore oil drilling, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/31/MNSH122TA3.DTL Some Democrats have already started to shift their views. Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., who voted two years ago against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and for a federal ban on offshore drilling, told a hometown paper last weekend he now wants to "drill everywhere." A new CNN/Opinion Research poll released this week found that 69 percent of Americans favor more offshore drilling, while 30 percent oppose it. But the poll found the public was split over whether more coastal drilling would lower gas prices, with 51 percent saying yes and 49 percent saying no. But the poll's more interesting finding was about who Americans blame for $4-a-gallon gas prices: About two-thirds said oil companies and foreign countries that produce energy were the major causes. Just over half blamed the Bush administration, the war in Iraq and the moratorium on offshore drilling. But only about 1 in 3 - 31 percent - blamed Democrats in Congress for high gas prices. "Republicans feel like they have an opening because of the gas price issue (to push for) domestic drilling, but we haven't seen any empirical evidence or tangible evidence that it's hurting Democrats," said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Report, which tracks House and Senate races. "Maybe this fall the issue will develop into a Republican advantage, but I don't see that we're there yet. It's a battle of messages between the two parties more than an anvil around the necks of Democrats." Pelosi has been holding votes on measures aimed at addressing gas prices, such as legislation to crack down on speculators in energy commodity markets and a measure to force Bush to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But here's the catch: The bills have won majority support, but failed to get the two-thirds backing needed to pass under special rules Pelosi has used to keep Republicans from offering a drilling measure on the House floor. Democratic leaders fear it might draw enough support to pass. The issue is likely to heat up again this fall. Republicans are debating whether to shut down the federal government - by blocking a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30 - if Democrats don't allow a vote on offshore drilling.
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OCS – AT: ↓ Oil Offshore drilling won’t affect oil prices soon CBS, 7-30-08, Reality Check On Offshore Drilling http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/30/eveningnews/main4309471.shtml?source=mostpop_story According to the federal government's own Department of Energy, drilling off America's coasts would not have a significant impact on domestic oil production or prices before 2030. And off-shore leasing wouldn't even begin before 2012. Why? Because the leasing process is cumbersome. And currently, there aren't enough rigs or workers or refineries to handle more oil. Then there's this. Most of the U.S. offshore oil, almost 10 billion barrels, lie off the coast of California. But at the current rate of U.S. consumption - about 20.7 million barrels a day - that would be burned up in 16 months. "It would have a pretty modest effect even when it did start flowing," said U.C. Berkeley energy researcher Severin Borenstein. Borenstein says it might drop pump prices as much as 25 cents a gallon in 10 years or more, but: "I think it is very unlikely that we will ever see oil prices that get us back to $2 a gallon or even $3 a gallon." Opponents of the drilling say what's off our shores is a drop in the bucket. Supporters say when the bucket is running dry, any little bit helps.
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OCS – Pelosi Key OCS will only pass if Pelosi lets it through Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, 8-3-08, The Not-So-Great Energy Debate, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-bernstein/the-not-so-great-energy-d_b_116618.html The reason this is so critical is because our only hope of winning this debate may lie in helping people to unconnect the dots between lifting the moratorium and the price of gas. Yes, it's hard to convince folks that drilling today won't lower prices tomorrow. But how about NOT drilling today? Because that's what we're talking about here. The stakes are very high. Sources on Capitol Hill tell me that the only thing holding the line on the bans right now is Pelosi's ability to block the vote. With the R's pressing this as their sole issue, and the majority of the public solidly in the "lift the ban" camp, she may not be able to control this one, and sources tell me if it comes to a vote, the ban is toast, certainly on the OCS and maybe ANWR too. If that does occur, our best move may be to go for something like the "gang of 10" compromise. That's a bipartisan group of 10 Senators who propose a limited expansion of OCS leasing with a quid pro quo that both repeals a big tax break from big oil and makes them finally pay royalties they've been avoiding for drilling on public lands.
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OCS – Won’t Pass OCS won’t pass – Dems see it as a hoax ABC News, 7-30-08, Bush Signs Housing Bill; Asks for New Focus On Energy, http://www.kcrg.com/explorepolitics/?feed=bim&id=26115324 The president recently repealed the executive branch ban on drilling in the outer continental shelf (OCS) and has called on Congress to follow suit in repealing its own ban. But the Democratic leadership, including presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, paint the problem as one we cannot drill our way out of, instead focusing their attention on curbing speculation in oil futures markets, potentially opening up a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and immediately moving toward renewable power sources like wind, solar and geothermal. Additionally, Democrats have criticized the move toward domestic oil production as an environmental hazard and a solution that would take years and have little real impact at the pump; Republicans contend that it would reduce dependency on foreign oil imports and provide a bridge toward currently less economical renewable technology. “The President knows, as his own Administration has stated, that the impact of any new drilling will be insignificant – promising savings of only pennies per gallon many years down the road,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Wednesday in response to the president’s comments. “The President has failed in his economic policy, and now he wants to say, ‘but for drilling in protected areas offshore, our economy would be thriving and the price of gas would be lower.’ That hoax is unworthy of the serious debate we must have to relieve the pain of consumers at the pump and to promote energy independence,” she continued.
Despite bipart, OCS won’t pass LA Times, 8-2-08, Senate Nears Energy Compromise, http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/hcenergy0802.artaug02,0,6146864.story However, the proposal's prospects appear a long shot for this year, with time running out on the congressional session. And in a politically charged election year, parties are stepping up attacks to highlight differences on issues such as energy policy. Although a compromise, a number of the proposals remain controversial. Included are proposals to expand drilling in the Gulf to within 50 miles of Florida, help revive the nuclear industry, and boost efforts to convert coal into motor vehicle fuel. Shortly after it was announced, the plan drew criticism from Florida's senators.
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Global Warming ! Global warming will destroy us if we don’t act now Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, 8-1-08, Can This Planet Be Saved?, New York Times, Op-Ed, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01krugman.html?hp In themselves, limits on offshore drilling are only a modest-sized issue. But the skirmish over drilling is the opening stage of a much bigger fight over environmental policy. What’s at stake in that fight, above all, is the question of whether we’ll take action against climate change before it’s utterly too late. It’s true that scientists don’t know exactly how much world temperatures will rise if we persist with business as usual. But that uncertainty is actually what makes action so urgent. While there’s a chance that we’ll act against global warming only to find that the danger was overstated, there’s also a chance that we’ll fail to act only to find that the results of inaction were catastrophic. Which risk would you rather run? Martin Weitzman, a Harvard economist who has been driving much of the recent high-level debate, offers some sobering numbers. Surveying a wide range of climate models, he argues that, over all, they suggest about a 5 percent chance that world temperatures will eventually rise by more than 10 degrees Celsius (that is, world temperatures will rise by 18 degrees Fahrenheit). As Mr. Weitzman points out, that’s enough to “effectively destroy planet Earth as we know it.” It’s sheer irresponsibility not to do whatever we can to eliminate that threat.
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C&T elections link Cap and trade causes McCain to lose the election - McCain loses base, Obama gains environmentalists Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, 8-1-08, Can This Planet Be Saved?, New York Times, Op-Ed, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01krugman.html?hp Now for the bad news: sheer irresponsibility may be a winning political strategy. Mr. McCain’s claim that opponents of offshore drilling are responsible for high gas prices is ridiculous — and to their credit, major news organizations have pointed this out. Yet Mr. McCain’s gambit seems nonetheless to be working: public support for ending restrictions on drilling has risen sharply, with roughly half of voters saying that increased offshore drilling would reduce gas prices within a year. Hence my concern: if a completely bogus claim that environmental protection is raising energy prices can get this much political traction, what are the chances of getting serious action against global warming? After all, a cap-and-trade system would in effect be a tax on carbon (though Mr. McCain apparently doesn’t know that), and really would raise energy prices. The only way we’re going to get action, I’d suggest, is if those who stand in the way of action come to be perceived as not just wrong but immoral. Incidentally, that’s why I was disappointed with Barack Obama’s response to Mr. McCain’s energy posturing — that it was “the same old politics.” Mr. Obama was dismissive when he should have been outraged. So as I said, I’m very glad to know that Nancy Pelosi is trying to save the planet. I just wish I had more confidence that she’s going to succeed.
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Auto Industry Weak Auto Industry dying Bill Vlasic, reporter for the Detroit News and a former Business Week correspondent, 8-2-08, G.M. Loses $15.5 Billion in Quarter, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/business/02gm.html The General Motors Corporation reported a stunning second-quarter loss of $15.5 billion on Friday because of a dramatic decline in United States sales and charges for job cuts, plant closings and the falling value of trucks and sport utility vehicles. G.M., the largest American automaker, said it lost $6.3 billion on operations in the quarter that ended June 30, and its worldwide revenues fell 18 percent. But the company’s overall loss was inflated by $9.1 billion in special charges that included $3.3 billion for buyouts of hourly workers and $2.8 billion related to the bankruptcy filing of its former parts unit, the Delphi Corporation. The dismal earnings reflected the impact of steadily falling vehicles sales in the overall United States market, and a huge shift by consumers away from the trucks and S.U.V.’s that were once G.M.’s most profitable vehicles. The automaker’s shares were off sharply on Friday, falling 68 cents, or about 6 percent, to $10.39 shortly before 1 p.m. G.M.’s chairman, Rick Wagoner, said Friday that the charges to scale down the automaker’s work force and manufacturing operations were critical in its restructuring. “As our recent product, capacity and liquidity actions clearly demonstrate, we are reacting rapidly to the challenges facing the U.S. economy and auto market, and we continue to take the aggressive steps necessary to transform our U.S. operations,” Mr. Wagoner said. Overall vehicle sales in the United States dropped 10 percent in the first six months. Automakers are scheduled to report their July sales later on Friday. But while weak economic conditions and falling sales have affected nearly every automaker, Detroit’s three car companies have borne the brunt of the slowdown. Last week, the Ford Motor Company reported a loss of $8.7 billion as it took big write-downs on the values of its North American truck plants and its inventory of used pickups and S.U.V.’s. G.M.’s second-quarter results were worse than projected by analysts, particularly its performance in its core North American market. The company lost $4.4 billion in North America in the period, and its revenue dropped 33 percent, from $29.7 billion to $19.8 billion. That compared with a profit of $92 million in the quarter a year ago. While G.M.’s vehicle sales in North America fell 20 percent in the quarter, the company’s international sales grew 10 percent. Last month, as investors speculated openly about the possibility of G.M.’s filing for bankruptcy protection, the automaker announced broad plans for further cost cuts, asset sales and debt offerings to improve its liquidity by $15 billion. In its second-quarter report, G.M. said it had $21 billion in cash reserves and access to another $5 billion in credit. But the automaker is burning through about $1 billion a month in cash as it tries to keep financing new product programs amid falling sales and revenue. G.M., like its Detroit rivals Ford and Chrysler, was surprised by the abrupt shift to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. As gas prices rose above $4 a gallon, sales of G.M.’s large pickups and S.U.V.’s declined sharply in a market that was already trending downward. While its overseas operations continued to perform well, G.M.’s United States sales dropped, and the company’s inventories of unsold trucks forced it to scale back production in the United States dramatically. . In June, Mr. Wagoner said the company would close four assembly plants making pickups and S.U.V.’s by 2010 and slash 500,000 units of vehicle production. And in a move that symbolized the end of the S.U.V. era, Mr. Wagoner said that G.M. had begun a “strategic review” toward a likely sale of its Hummer brand. Besides cutting truck and S.U.V. production, G.M. also announced plans to add third shifts at two plants to increase the output of smaller cars. The automaker stepped up its cutbacks in the United States by offering another round of buyout and early retirement programs to its hourly workers. About 19,000 workers — or a quarter of its unionized work force — accepted the offers and agreed to leave the company. But even as G.M. kept cutting, speculation grew among investors this summer that the automaker was running dangerously short on cash reserves.
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Bioterror Now/Biodefense fails High risk of bioterror attack now – biodefense increases risk, and al-Qaeda is developing it ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, 8-3-08, Debate Is Revived Over U.S. Efforts on Bioterrorism, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03anthrax.html?pagewanted=2 Today, there are hundreds of such researchers in scores of laboratories at universities and other institutions around the United States, preparing for the next bioattack. But the revelation that F.B.I. investigators believe that the anthrax attacks were carried out by Dr. Ivins, an Army biodefense scientist who committed suicide last week after he learned that he was about to be indicted for murder, has already re-ignited a debate: Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs? “We are putting America at more risk, not less risk,” said Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, chairman of a House panel that has investigated recent safety lapses at biolabs. F.B.I. investigators have long speculated that the motive for the attacks, if carried out by a biodefense insider like Dr. Ivins, might have been to draw public attention to a dire threat, attracting money and prestige to a once-obscure field. If that was the motive, it succeeded — for example, an experimental vaccine Dr. Ivins had spent years working on moved from the laboratory to a proposed billion-dollar federal contract after the attacks, which killed five people. Almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent since 2001 to build new laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs. Patents Dr. Ivins held on the research might have proved personally profitable. An anthrax vaccine he helped invent was slated to be added to the nation’s vaccine stockpile through an $877 million contract awarded in 2004. But the deal collapsed in late 2006 after the contractor, VaxGen of Brisbane, Calif., failed to meet deadlines. VaxGen, in a licensing agreement with the Army to produce the vaccine, had listed two patents held by Dr. Ivins and his colleague, but it made no mention of compensation planned for their work. Despite the insistence of Dr. Ivins’s lawyer and some of the scientist’s colleagues that he was innocent, officials at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. on Saturday appeared confident that they had the right man, though they said they were still weighing how and when to seek an end to the grand jury investigation. “That’s not a decision we’re going to make lightly,” one Justice Department official said Saturday. “There won’t be a rush to judgment.” Nearly seven years have passed without another biological attack, which has reduced the sense of urgency about the bioterrorist threat, even among some specialists. “I think it’s an important risk, but frankly I’m more concerned about bombs and guns, which are easily available and can be very destructive,” said Randall S. Murch, a former F.B.I. scientist who has studied ways to trace a bioterrorist attack to its source. Federal officials say they are convinced that the surge in spending has brought real gains. “Across the spectrum of biothreats we have expanded our capacity significantly," said Craig Vanderwagen, an assistant secretary at Health and Human Services who oversees the biodefense effort. Systems to detect an attack, investigate it and respond with drugs, vaccines and cleanup are all hugely improved, Mr. Vanderwagen said. "We can get pills in the mouth." Supporters of the spending surge cite studies that project apocalyptic tolls from a large-scale bioattack. One 2003 study led by a Stanford scholar, for instance, found that just two pounds of anthrax spores dropped over an American city could kill more than 100,000 people, even if antibiotic distribution began quickly. And there is ample evidence that Qaeda leaders have shown interest in using biological weapons. Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian-born Qaeda biochemist who trained in the United States, spent several months in 2001 trying to cultivate anthrax in Kandahar, Afghanistan. But the proliferation of biodefense research laboratories presents real threats, too, Congressional investigators recently warned. More people in more places handling toxic agents create more opportunities for an accident or intentional misuse by an insider, Keith Rhodes, an investigator with the Government Accountability Office, said at a Congressional hearing in October. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the intelligence community were the ones who were most concerned about it,” Mr. Rhodes testified. There also is insufficient federal oversight of biodefense facilities to make sure the laboratories follow security rules and report accidents that might threaten lab workers or, in an extreme case, lead to a release that might endanger the public, Mr. Rhodes testified. In effect the government may be providing the tools that a would-be terrorist could use, said Richard H. Ebright, a Rutgers University biochemist and vocal critic of the federal surge in biodefense spending. “One well-placed student, technician or senior scientist — no cost, with the salary being provided courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer — and no risk, no difficulty,” Mr. Ebright said. “That is all it takes.” Heightening the concern has been a string of accidents at certain new or expanded biodefense laboratories, several of which were not properly reported to authorities when they first took place.
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No Bioterror – Research/Biodefense solves Status quo solves bioterrorism – research ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, 8-3-08, Debate Is Revived Over U.S. Efforts on Bioterrorism, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03anthrax.html?pagewanted=2 Proponents say that clustering the laboratories on a military base will encourage safe scientific collaboration and save money through sharing of some facilities. The build-up, and the related surge in research, has brought some important advances, federal officials argue, such as a promising new experimental vaccines or therapies to treat smallpox or Ebola virus. The country now also has a greatly expanded stockpile of vaccines and drugs to treat anyone exposed in a future attack, including enough antibiotics to treat 40 million Americans who might be exposed to anthrax and nearly 5 million bottles of a special potassium iodide liquid that help protect infants from harm caused by nuclear fallout. Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, said he was convinced that the increased spending has left the nation better prepared for a future attack, without creating significant new vulnerabilities. “You can never say that the system is 100 percent secure,” he said. “But the research ethic today is one of much greater disciple and focus on security than was true prior to the anthrax attacks.”
Status quo can solve bioterror ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, 8-3-08, Debate Is Revived Over U.S. Efforts on Bioterrorism, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03anthrax.html?pagewanted=2 Nearly seven years have passed without another biological attack, which has reduced the sense of urgency about the bioterrorist threat, even among some specialists. “I think it’s an important risk, but frankly I’m more concerned about bombs and guns, which are easily available and can be very destructive,” said Randall S. Murch, a former F.B.I. scientist who has studied ways to trace a bioterrorist attack to its source. Federal officials say they are convinced that the surge in spending has brought real gains. “Across the spectrum of biothreats we have expanded our capacity significantly," said Craig Vanderwagen, an assistant secretary at Health and Human Services who oversees the biodefense effort. Systems to detect an attack, investigate it and respond with drugs, vaccines and cleanup are all hugely improved, Mr. Vanderwagen said. "We can get pills in the mouth."
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CA State DA Brink California’s economy is on the brink New York Times, 8-3-08, California Is Among States Struggling With Budgets, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03budget.html?ref=us Among states struggling with budget deficits brought on by a national economic slowdown and the subprime lending crisis, California saw its problems brought into sharp relief last week. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a temporary pay cut to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour for roughly 200,000 state workers, if the state controller goes along with it, and the laying off of 10,000 more. Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said he would reimburse workers for their full pay once the Legislature had finished the state budget, now several weeks overdue and about $17 billion in the red. California is among the worst-hit states in the foreclosure crisis, and a record number of California homeowners met with foreclosures last quarter — 121,341 defaults, up 125 percent from the second quarter of 2007, according to DataQuick Information Systems. The state is also one of the few that require a two-thirds legislative majority to pass a budget, which is particularly challenging with large deficits and unpopular cuts. Further, the state relies on income taxes rather than property taxes for most of its revenues, a difficult formula in times when jobs are in short supply. And the structure of the state’s budget, which is heavily leveraged and peppered with numerous mandatory spending requirements approved as ballot measures by voters, makes it all the harder to balance. “Propositions have money mandates,” said Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and an expert on the state’s constitution. “So much of the state is in hock, anyway.” The state has already made a 10 percent cut to its Medicaid reimbursement rate and deferred payments to vendors. Mr. Schwarzenegger has called for 10 percent across-the-board reductions to all general fund departments, and a sales tax increase may also be in the offing.
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(Solar/Wind) Tax Credits – GOP hates Current GOP hates tax credits for solar/wind energy JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press, 7-30-08, GOP blocks action on tax, renewable energy package, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5icrolgbXr0mlnZQmLr-1svIyNDpwD9289B8O0 For the fourth time this summer Republicans stopped the Senate from taking up wide-ranging legislation that extends tax breaks for teachers, businesses and parents and provides tax credits to an array of renewable energy entrepreneurs. Major business groups, usual GOP allies, have implored Congress to act on the tax credits, many which expired at the end of last year or will run out at the end of this year. But for many Republicans, it's a matter or principle and politics: many oppose what they say are new tax increases to pay for parts of the package and nearly all say the Senate's only business now is acting on an energy bill that promotes drilling and other measures to boost domestic oil supply. The White House, citing new taxes and other objections to the bill, threatened a presidential veto. The vote Wednesday was 51-43, nine short of the 60 needed to begin floor debate. "All the Republicans want to do is not pay for anything and we know the House would not accept that," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., anticipating the defeat. But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said his party sees a "need to dispose of the pending energy bill to help bring down the price of gas at the pump before turning to other matters." The bill would extend some $18 billion worth of renewable energy tax credits, helping out investors in wind and solar power, clean coal, plug-in electric vehicles and a variety of others.
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2NC OCS Tax Credit Tradeoff Link Passage of tax credits depletes GOP influence on drilling The Politico, 7-31-08, Reid: Work On Energy Bill "over Until The Fall" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/31/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4312030.shtml Republicans countered that by insisting on considering a tax extenders bill alongside the speculation bill, Reid was “moving the goalposts” to avoid potentially difficult votes on domestic drilling.
GOP is blocking tax credits on alternative energy to get oil drilling – plan eliminates it, allowing dems to block OCS Jim DiPeso, the policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection, 8-3-08, Reckless and Feckless, Congress Sandbags Renewables, http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/republican/renewable-energy-tax-incentives-55080301 Both Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress have professed their undying love for renewable energy resources. Their affection, however, took a back seat to rock 'em, sock 'em partisan politics when the Senate failed to move legislation extending various tax incentives for renewable resources. If the game of chicken goes on much longer, the tax incentives will expire at the end of the year, and billions of dollars in wind, solar, and other clean energy investment capital is likely to go elsewhere, where the politics are less toxic and the financial certainty more solid. Rather than putting money where their energy mouths are, both parties are playing for political trophies. Reckless and feckless, that’s what they are. The reckless Republicans are blocking important bills, such as the renewables incentives, as leverage to push for oil drilling floor votes, which polls show may play to their advantage. The feckless Democrats are maneuvering to dodge oil drilling floor votes, which has the effect of sandbagging important bills, such as the renewables incentives. They’re trying to run out the clock while they hope that the November election will paint the whole town blue.
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AT: Prolif Deterrence (Middle East) Deterrence doesn’t apply for Middle East prolif – at best it causes nuclear terrorism Stephen Peter Rosen, Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs, Harvard, 2006, After Proliferation, Foreign Affairs, Academic Search Premier Assume, for the sake of argument, that within the next decade Iran manages to acquire a few crude nuclear weapons and that these can be delivered by ballistic missiles within the Middle East and by clandestine means to the United States and Europe. Assume also that Saudi Arabia and Turkey, out of fear or competitive emulation, also develop their own nuclear arsenals. How would strategic interactions in this new world play out? During the Cold War, the small number of nuclear states meant that the identity of any nuclear attacker would be obvious. Preparations could thus be made for retaliation, and this helped deter first strikes. In a multipolar nuclear Middle East, however, such logic might not hold. For deterrence to work in such an environment, there would have to be detection systems that could unambiguously determine whether a nuclear-armed ballistic missile was launched from, say, Iran, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia. In earlier decades, the United States spent an enormous amount of resources on over-the-horizon radars and satellites that could detect the origin of missile launches in the Soviet Union. But those systems were optimized to monitor the Soviet Union and may not be as effective at identifying launches conducted from other countries. It may be technically simple for the United States (or Israel or Saudi Arabia) to deploy such systems, but until they exist and their effectiveness is demonstrated, deterrence might well be weak; it would be difficult to retaliate against a bomb that has no clear return address. It gets worse. During the Cold War, most analysts considered it unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used during peacetime; they worried more about the possibility of a nuclear conflict somehow emerging out of a conventional war. That scenario would still be the most likely in a postproliferation future as well, but the frequency of conventional wars in the Middle East would make it a less comforting prospect. If a nuclear-armed ballistic missile were launched while conventional fighting involving non-nuclear-armed ballistic missiles was going on in the region, how confident would any government be that it could identify the party responsible? The difficulty would be greater still if an airplane or a cruise missile were used to deliver the nuclear weapon. One of the greatest fears about Iran's possible acquisition of nuclear weapons, moreover, is that Tehran might give them to a terrorist group, which would dramatically increase the likelihood of their being used. Some argue that the Iranian government would never condone such a transfer; others that it would. There is no way of knowing for sure.
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Econ = Dead The economy is dead and can’t be revived – 13 reasons The Financial Times UK, 8-4-08, Only luck can save America's economy, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db4d7196-61bb-11ddaf94-000077b07658.html The US economy may not be in recession, but this is the nearest thing. In spite of the recent fiscal stimulus, output grew less than 2 per cent at an annual rate in the second quarter, slower than expected. That followed growth of 1 per cent in the first quarter and a contraction (on revised numbers) of 0.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2007. A recession is usually defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking output. It has not happened yet, but it very well might in the next few quarters. Even if it does not, that would be little consolation. Prospects for the second half of the year are poor. Some of the current boost from the fiscal injection delivered last quarter will keep feeding through, but consumer spending, the hitherto unstoppable engine of US growth, is stalling. The prices of food and petrol, together with still-tightening credit conditions and a housing market that has not yet touched bottom, are weighing it down. Net exports were the main accelerator in the second quarter - without that rise, in fact, output would have fallen, fiscal stimulus or no. But they cannot be relied on in future because growth in Europe and elsewhere is going to be limited by, among other things, policymakers' worries about inflation. Most forecasters are expecting a double-dip US slowdown - and the second dip could be a technical recession. Regardless, the labour market is already behaving that way. Unemployment moved up to 5.7 per cent in July, the labour department reported on Friday. Overtime is falling; involuntary part-time working is on the rise. Unemployment will climb above 6 per cent next year. While it may be true that the US has seen much worse, this is no mere "mental recession". What more can be done? The short answer is nothing. The policy options have narrowed almost to zero. The Federal Reserve has already cut interest rates sharply - more than some think wise - and is having to assure the markets that it is keeping an eye on inflation. In spite of the slowdown, consumer prices are rising at their fastest for almost 20 years. Crucially, this has not embedded itself in expectations of permanently higher inflation. If that happens, and prices start pushing wages, interest rates would have to go up. The recent poor numbers for output and jobs led markets not to expect that interest rates will be cut further, but to hope that they will not be raised again just yet. Some fiscal room for manoeuvre would be good right now - but precious little remains. The White House just updated its budget forecasts for next year. These pencil in a deficit of nearly $500bn (£253bn, €321bn). This excludes roughly $80bn of war costs. It also makes incomplete allowance for the fiscal component of the various housing-related bail-outs now in train. If Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the housing agencies, are forced to draw on the full support that the Treasury, with the passage of the new housing bill, is empowered to provide, add tens of billions more. A deficit of 5 per cent of gross domestic product next year is within reach. Looking farther ahead, both presidential candidates are promising to cut taxes by thousands of billions of dollars over the next 10 years (relative to the Bush administration's bogus baseline). Barack Obama, the Democratic contender, is calling for an additional fiscal stimulus right now. Budget deficits should indeed rise sharply in recessions. In the US, this requires more forceful intervention than in most European countries. Automatic fiscal stabilisers are less powerful in the US: the government is smaller, and the tax base (lacking a value-added tax or equivalent) is less cyclically sensitive. States have to comply with semi-binding balanced budget rules as well, which perversely tighten fiscal policy during recessions. California, in the midst of the current slowdown, has been forced to sack thousands of workers and put state employees on the minimum wage. Even so, further aggressive fiscal easing at the federal level would be risky. If the budget outlook starts to scare the markets and interrupt the flow of foreign capital to the US, the dollar might fall abruptly - worsening the inflation risk and forcing the Fed's hand on interest rates. The point at which fiscal easing becomes self-cancelling may not be far away. It is worth remembering where the blame for this neutering of fiscal policy lies: squarely with the Bush administration. At the start of this decade, the budget stood in surplus to the tune of 2.4 per cent of GDP. On unchanged policy, this was expected to grow to a surplus of 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2008. This year's actual deficit of 3 per cent of GDP therefore represents a worsening of more than 7 per cent of GDP, or roughly $1,000bn. Almost all of this deterioration is due to policy: to tax cuts, spending increases, and their associated debt-service costs. That projected surplus was a priceless gift to the White House. It offered the Bush administration ample scope for outlays on homeland security and other unforeseen priorities, and moderate tax cuts as well, all within a budget balanced over the course of the business cycle. Instead, the administration knowingly opted for outrageous fiscal excess - adding insult to injury with its phoney tax-cut sunset provisions, designed for no other purpose than to disguise the long-term fiscal implications. Eight years on, this startling record of fiscal irresponsibility has all but taken fiscal policy off the table as an available response to the slowdown. The US economy had better have luck on its side. Luck is about all it has left.
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Econ Low Economy is weak – mortgage crisis, auto industry collapse NYT, 8-4-08, VIKAS BAJAJ, Housing Lenders Fear Bigger Wave of Loan Defaults, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/business/04lend.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 Homeowners with good credit are falling behind on their payments in growing numbers, even as the problems with mortgages made to people with weak, or subprime, credit are showing their first, tentative signs of leveling off after two years of spiraling defaults. The percentage of mortgages in arrears in the category of loans one rung above subprime, so-called alternative-A mortgages, quadrupled to 12 percent in April from a year earlier. Delinquencies among prime loans, which account for most of the $12 trillion market, doubled to 2.7 percent in that time. The mortgage troubles have been exacerbated by an economy that is still struggling. Reports last week showed another drop in home prices, slower-than-expected economic growth and a huge loss at General Motors. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate in July climbed to a four-year high. While it is difficult to draw precise parallels among various segments of the mortgage market, the arc of the crisis in subprime loans suggests that the problems in the broader market may not peak for another year or two, analysts said. Defaults are likely to accelerate because many homeowners’ monthly payments are rising rapidly. The higher bills come as home prices continue to decline and banks tighten their lending standards, making it harder for people to refinance loans or sell their homes. Of particular concern are “alt-A” loans, many of which were made to people with good credit scores without proof of their income or assets. “Subprime was the tip of the iceberg,” said Thomas H. Atteberry, president of First Pacific Advisors, a investment firm in Los Angeles that trades mortgage securities. “Prime will be far bigger in its impact.” In a conference call with analysts last month, James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said he expected losses on prime loans at his bank to triple in the coming months and described the outlook for them as “terrible.”
The economy is weak and won’t revive itself soon Rodrigue Tremblay Online Journal, 8-4-08, The U.S. economy and bad government policies, http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3575.shtml In the same spirit, some refer to the Fed’s bailouts of troubled investment banks as a sort of Bernanke put, because of the Fed’s aggressive policy of reducing interest rates to fight market falls or to bail out financial companies in trouble. Because of the current economic slowdown, the inflationary consequences of such a policy is not apparent yet, but it could be the foundations of future inflation down the road. Let us keep in mind that historically-low interest rates, lax lending standards, and inadequate regulation were behind the U.S. housing bubble. The seeds are now sown for the next bubble. Third, let us look quickly at fiscal policy. The Bush-Cheney administration’s fiscal policy has been characterized by budget deficit upon budget deficit, whatever the state of the economy. In its entire eight years in office, in fact, it has never balanced the budget. On the contrary, it has even spent the budget surplus that it inherited from the Clinton administration. And it has announced that it plans to leave the coming administration with a record 2009 deficit of half a trillion dollars. Indeed, the previous Bush-Cheney administration’s record was its 2004 $413 billion deficit. Although such deficits at about 3.3 percent of the gross national product (GDP) are lower than the 6.0 percent of GDP we saw in the early 1980’s, they are cumulative, and they have occurred at a time when U.S. foreign indebtedness is much higher and the U.S. dollar much weaker. It can be said that they have contributed to weakening the United States and making it more vulnerable to economic and financial shocks.
The US Economy is weak Mercopress, 8-1-08, US economy picks up but Governors give different picture, http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=14123&formato=HTML Mr Paulson predicted that the US economy would get stronger next year "and beyond". But the figure was worse than expected and caused shares to fall. The benchmark Dow Jones index closed more than 200 points, or 1.78% lower at 11,378.02 points. Investors were also concerned that the government had downgraded its estimate of growth in the last three months of 2007 from the previous reading of 0.6% to show a negative growth figure of -0.2%. The US dollar fell across the board, including against the Euro and the yen, following the release of the data. At the current growth rate of nearly 2%, the US economy is only growing at half the rate it was one year ago.
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Econ Collapse = Slow Economic collapse will be slow – current mortgage crisis proves Rodrigue Tremblay Online Journal, 8-4-08, The U.S. economy and bad government policies, http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3575.shtml In economics, bad decisions and bad policies do not always result in immediate negative consequences. It takes time for them to work their way through the economy and produce their corrosive effects. Many of the current economic and financial problems of today are the result of bad policies of the past.
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Economy = Resilient Even if government policies are hurting the economy, the private sector is resilient Rodrigue Tremblay Online Journal, 8-4-08, The U.S. economy and bad government policies, http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3575.shtml There have been many policy missteps over the last 20 some years, and this has amounted to a mismanagement of the U.S. economy. The result has been an unhealthy mixture of greed, shortsightedness and market manipulation. And now, all the chickens are coming home to roost and the crisis is deepening. This does not mean that the private side of the U.S. economy is not resilient and strong. It only means that government policies have often been misguided and have damaged the private economy and hurt the people economically.
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Econ Collapse Inevitable Econ collapse inevitable Rodrigue Tremblay Online Journal, 8-4-08, The U.S. economy and bad government policies, http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3575.shtml Essentially, at the government level, each new economic crisis seems to have been “solved” by creating the conditions for the next one. This is particularly true in regards to regulation policy, monetary policy, and fiscal policy. Each time a policy choice had to be made, it seems that short-term benefits were often privileged at the expense of long-term costs. First, let us consider regulation policy for the crucial financial sector. Over the last 20 years, U. S. deregulation of the financial sector has been based on developing what I would call predatory financial capitalism, that is to say the systematic encouragement of excessive risk taking (moral hazard) and of corporate greed in general, the development of the pyramidal $2.5 trillion hedge fund industry, the practice of highly-leveraged buyouts (LBOs) of healthy companies with their own highyield debt, also known as “bootstrap” investments, and the practice of program trading. Moreover, this was a system that was not only risky but also fraught with shady activities. To accomplish this deregulation or non-regulation of the financial sector and to encourage the over-indebtedness of the U.S. economy, a whole series of safeguards that had been wisely established to prevent a repeat of the financial and economic disasters of the 1930s were dismantled and cast aside. The last one in line was the reckless abolition by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the speculative prevention rule called the downtick-uptick rule (which prohibited short-selling when stock prices were falling), in July 2006. Such safeguards had been put in place in order to avoid systemic financial instability, to make financial institutions more responsible to users and to avoid costly government bailouts when large financial institutions fail. Today, we are back to the 1930s with large financial institutions reaping huge profits and paying obscene salaries to their CEOs in good times and with government bailing them out with public money when things turn sour.
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Econ Low/AT: Fed Economy is weak and Fed won’t change rates USA Today, 8-4-08, Barbara Hagenbaugh, Fed unlikely to change rates this week, http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-08-03-fed-fmoc-bernanke_N.htm Federal Reserve policymakers are finding their jobs aren't getting any easier as a sluggish economy and stubbornly high inflation put them in an interest-rate bind. Given the competing challenges, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are expected to keep their target for short-term interest rates, which influence borrowing costs economywide, at 2% when they meet Tuesday. The rate has been steady since April. The meeting comes a year after U.S. central bankers began aggressively pumping money into a faltering financial system. In some ways, the job now has become more complicated. While they continue to fight to stabilize financial markets and an economy weakened by the housing meltdown, Fed policymakers now also have to ward off inflationary pressures that have nearly doubled in the last year in large part because of rapidly rising energy and food prices. The consumer price index was up 5% in June from a year earlier, the highest in 17 years. While the weak economy would suggest the need for lower interest rates, price pressures are forcing the Fed to sit on the sidelines. The Fed would normally raise rates to combat inflation.
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Econ Brink Economy is growing and stabilizing, but faces difficulties AFP, 8-1-08, Paulson sees US economy still growing this year, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iE-ObRDGruw_UuQ6i4G8TTt_Bxw Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Thursday he expects "moderate" growth in the US economy this year and some stability returning to the housing market in a matter of months. The top US economic official made his comments after data showed a 1.9 percent growth pace in the second quarter lifted by an economic stimulus plan and exports, but with some analysts still worried about a possible recession. "While our economy faces substantial difficulties that will continue to be a drag on growth in the short term, it is important to remember that our long-term fundamentals are strong," he said in a Washington speech. "Recognizing the challenges ahead of us, I expect our economy to continue growing this year although at a moderate pace. We are making progress although not in a straight line; housing continues to be at the heart of our economic challenges and remains our most significant downside risk." Paulson was relatively upbeat on prospects for a recovery in the battered housing market after the worst slump in decades. He said the market will be helped by the recently enacted housing rescue package aimed at helping homeowners refinance and adding liquidity to the sector, but suggested there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel.
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Econ - Growing US Economy is growing Mercopress, 8-1-08, US economy picks up but Governors give different picture, http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=14123&formato=HTML "Clearly the stimulus plan has supported the US economy during this difficult period and couldn't have been timelier," said US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Without that extra government spending, which added almost 4% to the economy that quarter, it is feared that growth would have been negative. Analysts are now concerned about what will happen to the US when the benefit of the stimulus package, which gave tax rebates to 130 million households, has passed. The US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he expects the economy to continue growing this year and "to return to stronger growth next year and beyond".
US economy is growing – stimulus plan and Fannie/Freddie – data proves WSJ, 7-31-08, Paulson Says Stimulus Worked, But Housing Still Correcting, MAYA JACKSON RANDALL, Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121752429127901443.html?mod=googlenews_wsj U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Thursday said new economic data prove that the economic stimulus plan has successfully propped up the U.S. economy, but said it will take additional months for the housing market -- the biggest risk to the economy -- to fully recover. That said, his focus going forward will be on the housing and capital markets, he said in a speech at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. "Our first and most urgent priority is working through the housing downturn and capital market turmoil and that will be our priority until these situations are resolved," said Mr. Paulson. The fact that the U.S. economy expanded modestly in the second quarter of 2008 is proof that the economic stimulus plan backed by Congress and the Bush Administration "has supported the U.S. economy" amid difficulties in the housing and financial markets, the Treasury chief said. Meanwhile, Mr. Paulson said he expects the U.S. economy to continue to grow, although it will take additional time for the troubled housing and credit markets to return to normal. "Recognizing the challenges ahead of us, I expect our economy to continue growth this year although at a moderate pace," he said. "We are making progress although not in a straight line; housing continues to be at the heart of our economic challenges and remains our most significant downside risk." According to data the Commerce Department released early Thursday, the U.S. economy sped up in the spring after shrinking late last year. Still, growth was weaker than expected. The department said gross domestic product climbed only 1.9% in the second quarter despite the tax rebates provided in the economic stimulus package. Wall Street had expected 2.3% growth in GDP. Addressing ongoing issues in the housing markets, Mr. Paulson said he expects foreclosures and existing home inventories to remain "substantially elevated" in 2008 and 2009. "And home prices are likely to decline further on a national basis," he said. Still, he argued that the markets could move through the bulk of the housing market correction "in months rather than years." Mr. Paulson reiterated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's continued activity is central to the speed at which the U.S. economy revives.
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New York Economy – Low New York’s economy is weak Mercopress, 8-1-08, US economy picks up but Governors give different picture, http://www.mercopress.com/vernoticia.do?id=14123&formato=HTML New York governor David Paterson earlier this week admitted the state economy was in recession and announced spending cuts to face a steep budget deficit due to declining tax revenues.
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No Israel Strikes Israel won’t strike – rhetoric is all psychological Eli Hoffmann, Seeking Alpha Editor, 8-3-08, Don't Bet on an Iran War - Barron's, http://seekingalpha.com/article/88776-don-t-beton-an-iran-war-barron-s Despite Israel's saber-rattling, Barron's says the threat of an Israel or U.S. attack on Iran is negligible. George Friedman, founder and head of highly-respected (and prescient) Stratfor global-intelligence company notes: The Iran-attack story gained widespread credence after the New York Times reported June 20 that more than 100 Israeli aircraft had participated several weeks earlier in a military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean, near Greece. The distance from Israel was roughly 900 miles, the same as that separating Israel from Iran, and the exercise was viewed as a trial run for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Just a day later, the Times of London quoted Israeli military sources who confirmed the "dress rehearsal" nature of the exercise, while a story in the Jerusalem Post alluded to previous statements made by Israeli intelligence officials who said Iran would cross an unspecified nuclear threshold in 2008, not 2009, as expected. The saber-rattling by unnamed officials smacks of psychological warfare to Friedman, however -- not preparations for the real thing. "Why would Israel telegraph its punch like that?" he asks. "Recall that when Israel took out Iraq's Osirak reactor back in 1981, it was successful precisely because it gave no hint at all of an impending attack." An attack on Iran would essentially close the Strait of Hormuz until the area was de-mined, which could easily drive crude prices "to more than $300 a barrel, which even over a short period would be cataclysmic to the global economy and stock markets." Ahmadinejad has recently toned down his anti-Western rhetoric, while the U.S. has softened its stance. Besides which, Friedman says, Iran is decades away from developing credible nuclear weaponry - and by all measures may never get there. Lacking Western know-how, the best it can hope for down the road would be a controlled explosion of a crude device. Barron's says cooler heads will prevail, and the end game is closer than most imagine.
Israel wants diplomacy – strikes are unlikely Reuters, 7-31-08, U.S., Israel discuss diplomatic push on Iran, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN3137356320080731?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0 U.S. and Israeli officials discussed diplomatic efforts and financial sanctions to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the State Department said on Thursday. The West accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian program; Iran denies it. There has been speculation that either the United States or Israel could attack Iran's nuclear facilities, though both have said force should be a last resort. The brief statement, issued after talks between senior officials from the United States and Israel in Washington, said nothing about the possibility of using force against Iran. "The United States and Israel share deep concern about Iran's nuclear program, and the two delegations discussed steps to strengthen diplomatic efforts and financial measures to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability," the statement said. It gave no details of the measures discussed. "We also reaffirmed our strong mutual determination to counter Iran's support for terrorism," said the statement, which the State Department said was being issued by both the United States and Israel. Western powers gave Iran two weeks from July 19 to respond to their offer to hold off on imposing more U.N. sanctions on Iran if Tehran would freeze any expansion of its nuclear work. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday Iran would press ahead with its nuclear path. Israel is believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, though it has never confirmed having nuclear weapons. Israel officially maintains that it will not be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons in the region. The U.S.-Israeli talks were part of regular consultations between the two countries known as the "strategic dialogue." The delegations were led by U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Bill Burns, and Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz. Mofaz is considered a possible successor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who plans to quit after his party chooses a new leader in September. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in New York this week that tough sanctions should be used to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but added that no options should be excluded.
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No Strikes – Israel and US US and Israel won’t strike Iran David Ignatius, an associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post. He also co-hosts PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues, 8-3-2008; Washington Post, Page B07, 'Bomb Bomb Iran'? Not Likely. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080102872.html Analysts speculate about the danger of a U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran before the Bush administration departs office next January. But if you read the tea leaves carefully, the evidence is actually pointing in the opposite direction. One sign that the diplomatic track is dominant for now is that the administration plans to announce late this month that it will open an interest section in Tehran, a senior official disclosed Thursday. This will be an important symbol, as it will be the first American diplomatic mission in Iran since the U.S. Embassy there was seized in 1979. The official described it as an effort to "reach out to the Iranian people." The Iranian government has long had an interest section in Washington. The administration's wariness of military options is also clear from recent efforts to dissuade Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, traveled to Israel in early June; he was followed in late June by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both officials explained to their Israeli counterparts why the United States believes an attack isn't necessary now, because the Iranians can't yet build a nuclear weapon, and why an attack would damage U.S. national interests. McConnell and Mullen also informed the Israelis that the United States would oppose overflights of Iraqi airspace to attack Iran, an administration official said. The United States has reassured the Iraqi government that it would not approve Israeli overflights, after the Iraqis strongly protested any potential violation of their sovereignty. "We have made our position abundantly clear to the Israelis and indeed to the world, not just in our public statements but in our private conversations, as well," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. Though the administration has often been portrayed as divided over military options against Iran, an official denied there are now any sharp rifts. "There is uniformity across the U.S. government about the way to proceed with Iran," the official said. "Everyone from this White House, including the vice president's office, is in agreement that the military option is not the best option at this point, and we should pursue diplomatic and economic pressures."
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US opposes Israeli Strikes US opposes Israeli strikes on Iran David Ignatius, an associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post. He also co-hosts PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues, 8-3-2008; Washington Post, Page B07, 'Bomb Bomb Iran'? Not Likely. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080102872.html U.S. opposition to an Israeli military strike now is based on four factors, the official said. First, a strike would retard the Iranian nuclear program without destroying it. (One intelligence estimate is that an attack would delay the Iranians by just two months to two years.) Second, a strike would rally support for the unpopular government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he faces growing economic difficulty. Third, an attack would undermine U.S. policy in Iraq, when the United States appears to be making some progress, and in Afghanistan. And, finally, a strike against Iran, as with any military action, would have unpredictable consequences. In evaluating the Iranian nuclear threat, the United States and Israel are using different intelligence. U.S. analysts believe Iran can't produce a bomb before the end of 2009 and probably not until the 2010--2015 time frame, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.
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No Pol Cap Bush’s capital is dead – 7 reasons DAVID LIGHTMAN McClatchy News Service staff writer, 7-20-08, Bush's clout is in a downward spiral, Miami Herald, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/610912.html
The White House wants the American public to think it's on the rebound, scoring important triumphs in Iraq and North Korea and on domestic spying while taking tough stands on oil drilling and relief for homeowners. The White House, the experts and the polls say, however, is wrong. President Bush hasn't begun a comeback. ''All this is pretty much a lot of noise. He's going out with a whimper,'' said Erwin Hargrove, presidential scholar at Vanderbilt University and the author of The Effective President. Adam Warber, professor of political science at Clemson University, had similar thoughts. ''It's very difficult for him now. His public approval is so poor, he doesn't really have a lot of political capital,'' Warber said. Congress is run by Democrats reluctant to give Bush any domestic victories, and his approval ratings have remained at or near a dismal 30 percent for about a year. Bush is the nation's fifth lame duck since the 22nd Amendment limited presidents to two terms, beginning with Harry Truman's successor in 1952. One was Richard Nixon, who resigned because of Watergate-related scandals 19 months into his second term. The others left office with strong approval ratings. Bill Clinton's was 59 percent in a July 2000 Gallup poll. Ronald Reagan's number when he left office was 64 percent. Dwight D. Eisenhower hit 59 percent approval just before stepping down. Bush's achievements, which are fueling the White House PR machine, flow from his recent tendency to compromise more on national security issues. In recent weeks Bush: • Discussed with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki what the White House called ''a general time horizon'' for cutting the number of American troops in Iraq. Bush said he wasn't endorsing timetables, which he has long opposed. • Took North Korea, which he once labeled part of an ''axis of evil,'' off the list of terrorism sponsors and loosened trade sanctions after it agreed to provide details of its nuclear program. • Won congressional approval of $162 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, though only after including new college aid for military veterans that he'd opposed. • Won his bid to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including the controversial provision that could allow immunity for telecommunications firms that participated in warrantless wiretaps. • Ended the executive ban on drilling off most U.S. coastlines. • Tried to reassure the public, in his first news conference since April, that he understood their economic pain and was working to ease it. Bush was upbeat recently as he recalled his recent string of accomplishments. 'People say, `Aw, man, you're running out of time. Nothing's going to happen,' '' he said. He rattled off his list and looked ahead. ''What can we get done?'' he asked. ``We can get good housing legislation done. We can get good energy legislation done. We can get trade bills done. And there's plenty of time to get action with the United States Congress.'' But outside the White House, few were as optimistic. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed Bush's energy policies, saying, ''Really, the president's done nothing.'' His call for more drilling, Reid said, ``underlines and underscores that the main organization he's trying to help are the oil companies.'' Congress needs to approve any end to the drilling ban, and with Democratic leaders opposed, that's unlikely. There are more ominous signs for Bush that his power remains diluted. This week, Congress overrode his veto of Medicare legislation, and in the House of Representatives, Republicans, who fear a rout in November's elections, put some polite distance between themselves and the White House. ''You want the president involved, but in the context of the election, he's not on the ballot,'' said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the House chief deputy Republican whip. ``Our candidates are on the ballot.'' Next week, Congress is expected to consider help for faltering housing markets, including a rescue plan for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some conservative Republicans are wary, saying the bill could become costly to taxpayers. Passage is expected, but it won't come easily. Analysts say that unless the president's approval rating jumps -- unlikely as long as the economy wobbles and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars continue -- his clout is likely to remain diminished. ''It's not clear he's turned anything around, so the current view of him will probably endure for a while,'' said Bruce Buchanan, professor of government at the University of Texas.
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Nuclear Waste costs PC Waste storage makes expanding nuclear power unpopular Marianne Means, past chairman of the National Press Foundation, a founding member of the International Women's Media, April 12, 2001, Bush, Cheney Will Face Wall of Opposition If They Try To Resurrect Nuclear Power, Hearst Newspapers, http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0412-05.htm Vice President Dick Cheney, head of the presidential task force studying our energy needs, favors building new nuclear power plants and he's oddly casual about it. The industry has been moribund in this country since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island more than two decades ago set off fierce emotional resistance to an unreliable technology capable of accidentally spreading deadly radiation. No new plants have been ordered since then. Only 20 percent of our electricity is generated by nuclear power. But President Bush has instructed Cheney to look into the prospect of resurrecting and developing nuclear power as a major part of a broad new energy policy. Cheney argues that modern, improved reactors operate safely, economically and efficiently. "It's one of the safest industries around," he says unequivocally. There remains, however, a little problem of how to dispose of the plants' radioactive waste. Cheney concedes that issue is still unsolved. "If we're going to go forward with nuclear power, we need to find a way to resolve it," he said Sunday in an NBC "Meet The Press" interview.
No state wants to be the repository of the more than 40,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste currently accumulating at 103 commercial reactor sites around the country. This spent fuel is so deadly it can remain a potential threat to public health and safety for thousands of years. A leak could silently contaminate many miles of groundwater that millions of people depend on. In 1987, Congress designated Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas, as the most likely
site to bury the dangerous stuff. But furious Nevada officials, using all their political clout, have thus far managed to fend off final federal approval. Recently they sharply challenged the scientific integrity of a feasibility study that found the location suitable for long-term storage. Former Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., is the author of what the state's congressional delegation calls the "screw Nevada" bill recommending Yucca Mountain. Last December Bush, looking for a friendly Democrat to include in his Cabinet, considered selecting Johnston, now a nuclear industry lobbyist, as secretary of energy. But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., publicly warned that he would rally environmental groups and other nuclear opponents for a classic nomination fight. Reid bluntly said he would "do everything I can" to keep Johnston from the energy post. Johnston wisely withdrew his name from contention. Former Sen. Spencer Abraham, who got the job instead, has been less identified with Nevada's fate but is believed to back its selection for storage as an essential step toward future nuclear power development. An alternate waste site was suggested in Utah on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation. It was promoted as a temporary location for the waste casks for several years until the Yucca Mountain facility can be built. But Utah's political leaders don't want their state to warehouse the waste either. Not for a day. Not for a minute. And conservative Utah has considerable influence with Bush, who has promised to veto any legislation that allows temporary storage. "Nobody wants this waste," acknowledges Frank Murkowski, RAlaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "It is a highly politicized issue. If you throw it up in the air, it is going to come down somewhere." Two places it is not likely to come down are Texas, Bush's home state, and Wyoming, where Cheney grew up from age 13 on. The vice president scowled when he was asked if he would be willing to put the waste in either of those two states. He ducked the issue, echoing Murkowski that "it will have to be put someplace." Environmentalists, already angry at Bush for permitting logging in federal parks and other anti-conservation policy decisions, are preparing for a noisy political battle over the Bush administration's interest in expanding nuclear power. Federal officials estimate that electricity demand will rise 45 percent over the next two decades and require the construction of more than 1,300 new power plants, some of which may be nuclear reactors. No specific plans, however, have yet surfaced. Cheney refused to get into the numbers game, saying only that he would like to see the percentage of electricity produced by nuclear power "go up." The Bush administration figures that the current rush for new energy sources will make nuclear power easier to sell a nervous public than in the past. But they may figure wrong. From time to time, this country goes through a political spasm in which we declare an energy emergency, predicting terrible shortages if we don't do something fast. So far, we have preferred patchwork solutions like voluntary conservation to a growing dependency
on nuclear power. It's just too scary a prospect. 30
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AT: Fuel Efficiency CP doesn’t cost PC Congress and the auto-industry don’t want fuel efficiency regulations NYT, May 18, 2001, A Misguided Energy Proposal, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE1D9113AF93BA25756C0A9679C8B63&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The report is not without value. Though the document was hatched in secret, it could well stimulate an open debate on the country's energy future. More specifically, it proposes some long-overdue capital spending on the country's transmission lines and natural-gas pipeline system. In a nod to the conservationists whom Vice President Dick Cheney has been belittling, it offers hefty tax credits for hybrid cars that run on gasoline and electricity. In addition, the report promises to study possible increases in the fuel economy of the nation's fleet of cars and light trucks -- though nobody really expects Mr. Bush to risk any political capital on changes that the automobile industry opposes and Congress itself has refused to make.
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Yucca – Costs PC Repealing waste limitations on Yucca would collapse Bush’s political capital Marianne Means, past chairman of the National Press Foundation, a founding member of the International Women's Media, April 12, 2001, Bush, Cheney Will Face Wall of Opposition If They Try To Resurrect Nuclear Power, Hearst Newspapers, http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0412-05.htm
No state wants to be the repository of the more than 40,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste currently accumulating at 103 commercial reactor sites around the country. This spent fuel is so deadly it can remain a potential threat to public health and safety for thousands of years. A leak could silently contaminate many miles of groundwater that millions of people depend on. In 1987, Congress designated Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas, as the most likely site to bury the dangerous stuff. But furious Nevada officials, using all their political clout, have thus far managed to fend off final federal approval. Recently they sharply challenged the scientific integrity of a feasibility study that found the location suitable for long-term storage. Former Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., is the author of what the state's congressional delegation calls the "screw Nevada" bill recommending Yucca Mountain. Last December Bush, looking for a friendly Democrat to include in his Cabinet, considered selecting Johnston, now a nuclear industry lobbyist, as secretary of energy. But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., publicly warned that he would rally environmental groups and other nuclear opponents for a classic nomination fight. Reid bluntly said he would "do everything I can" to keep Johnston from the energy post. Johnston wisely withdrew his name from contention. Former Sen. Spencer Abraham, who got the job instead, has been less identified with Nevada's fate but is believed to back its selection for storage as an essential step toward future nuclear power development. An alternate waste site was suggested in Utah on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation. It was promoted as a temporary location for the waste casks for several years until the Yucca Mountain facility can be built. But Utah's political leaders don't want their state to warehouse the waste either. Not for a day. Not for a minute. And conservative Utah has considerable influence with Bush, who has promised to veto any legislation that allows temporary storage. "Nobody wants this waste," acknowledges Frank Murkowski, RAlaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "It is a highly politicized issue. If you throw it up in the air, it is going to come down somewhere." Two places it is not likely to come down are Texas, Bush's home state, and Wyoming, where Cheney grew up from age 13 on. The vice president scowled when he was asked if he would be willing to put the waste in either of those two states. He ducked the issue, echoing Murkowski that "it will have to be put someplace."
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Yucca – Dems oppose Dems won’t support Yucca – Reid and elections John Gorenfeld, Freelance Journalist, 11-13-2007, Nevada's Clout in the Primaries Puts the Spotlight on Nuclear Politics, Alternet, http://www.alternet.org/environment/63261/?page=1
Any Democrat who wanted to support Yucca would have to deal with Harry Reid, the party's Senate Majority Leader and the responsible party for the early caucus date. He was calling Bush a liar over Yucca long before he opposed him on Iraq. "I have spent 20 years fighting the absurd idea that massive quantities of deadly nuclear waste can be transported across thousands of miles," Reid has said. And Bush, he told the New Yorker, "started out on a real bad foot with me because of Yucca Mountain." The president had run promising to consider "sound science" before supporting Yucca, but now signed off on the project rather than wait. In 2002, Reid told Bush in an Oval Office meeting: "You sold out on this." Six years later,
the next step to establishing Yucca just may play a role in the 2008 general election. It's a license application that will fall smack in the middle of the presidential race next summer. The U.S. government will consider a 10,000page application and decide whether to grant permission to go ahead.
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Reid key to OCS OCS vote will pass now if Senator Reid agrees Wall Street Journal, 7-15-2008, Reid Faces More Heat To Ease Oil-Drilling Ban, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121617044402856421.html?mod=googlenews_wsj WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
faced more pressure to ease a congressional ban on expanded offshore drilling for oil, as both Republicans and Democrats sought to show they are responding to high energy prices in an election year. Sen. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said he is ready to move a bill targeting what he called "greedy speculators," which would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission greater authority to regulate energy futures, particularly over-the-counter swaps markets and foreign exchanges operating in the U.S. But Republicans said they may try to block that legislation if it doesn't include measures to allow new domestic oil production. Sen. Reid suggested Tuesday he might agree to at least allow votes on the drilling issue. "We're happy to take a look at a number of different approaches," he said. "If we get on to the speculation bill, we'll take a look at ways to amend that." With several polls showing a rise in public support for more drilling offshore, Republicans are hammering away at the issue, starting with seeking to open long-closed areas on the outer continental shelf, where the government says an estimated 18 billion barrels of oil and several trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie undiscovered.
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Military Link – costs PC Modernizing the military costs political capital BBC News, 24 May, 2001, Bush seeks 'military revolution,' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1349698.stm But changes in military technology are also shaping the challenges of the future. More accurate and longer-range weaponry is proliferating. New reconnaissance systems promise to give commanders an unrivalled view of any future battlefield. The tempo and range of future combat may be very different. The US remains the technological leader, but it needs to use this advantage in new ways. Vested interests Fundamental change, though, in the Pentagon is a matter as much of culture as of planning. Each of America's armed forces represents a huge bureaucracy of vested interests. The US needs more joint effort between the services and less duplication. To take on such interests, President Bush has chosen a strong team, not least Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a veteran Pentagon insider. This administration is full of inside military knowledge; from Colin Powell a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - at the State Department, and Vice-President Dick Cheney, a former defence secretary.
Fundamental defence reform is not going to be an easy brief. It will require an extraordinary investment of political capital. Some defence experts believe that Mr Bush may have much more success in the nuclear field, where there may be a significant shift away from regarding Russia as the benchmark for constructing America's own nuclear forces. Painful choices But in the conventional field, where every weapons system has its supporters in both the services and on Capitol Hill, difficult choices will quickly become painful choices. The bottom line, as ever, is the dollar. Mr Bush has given strong backing to missile defence, which could eat up funding. Defence reform is going to need new money. Some $30 to $35bn in additional money may be needed in the 2002 fiscal year. But that will not be enough to bring about the military revolution that Mr Bush has effectively promised.
Both Dems and Republicans hate military spending Elana Schor is a staff reporter for Guardian America, 2-4-2008, Democrats criticise Bush budget for fudging Iraq costs http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/04/usa.elanaschor George Bush released his annual budget plan today, prompting disdain from congressional Democrats who chastised the president for again fudging the costs of the Iraq war and tax cuts in order to claim he could erase the US deficit. The
$3.1 trillion budget would increase US military spending for the 11th straight year while slicing about $200bn from the social security and Medicare programs that aid older Americans. The budget deficit under Bush's proposal would balloon to $410bn this year - more than twice as much as 2007 - before achieving balance in 2012. That claim of a balanced budget hinges on only $70bn in spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, an estimate that even White House aides acknowledge they will exceed during the next fiscal year. The Bush budget also fails to account for the growth of the alternative minimum tax, which Congress must adjust every year to avoid leaving middle-class Americans with a huge tax bill. By contrast, Bush assumes that the Democrats who control Congress would cement his legacy by permanently extending individual and corporate tax cuts, which are likely to expire for the wealthiest taxpayers. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid, leading a chorus of alarm in his party, called the Bush budget "fiscally irresponsible and highly deceptive". "In the face of a
looming recession, the president's budget does nothing to strengthen our economy, and fails to respond to the real problems facing middle-class families," the Democrat said in a statement. Barack Obama, hoping to win the Democrats' presidential nod this spring, used the budget's rosy projection of indefinite tax cuts to hammer the Republicans' likely nominee. "The fact that John McCain, who once opposed these tax cuts, now embraces them, tells the American people all they need to know about the choice they face in this election," Obama said through a spokesman. The presidential budget traditionally serves as a guide for Congress in its decisions over spending levels for government programmes. But Democrats have neither willingness nor compelling reason to meet Bush halfway during his last year in office. The majority party is likely to set separate priorities, focusing more on social programmes than the White House. Revealing the extent of Bush's diminished political capital, even members of his own party gave the budget little credence. Judd Gregg, the senior Republican on the Senate budget committee, released a statement that pointed out where the president fell short. "Any budget, to be effective, needs to address the unsustainable growth of entitlement spending, which is the single biggest factor contributing to the long-term fiscal crisis we face," Gregg said. "A 35
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Winning Iraq – Increases PC Winning in Iraq will increase Bush’s capital Don Luskin is Chief Investment Officer for Trend Macrolytics, an economics research and consulting service, April 12, 2003 Bush's Next War to Liberate the American Economy, Capitalism Magazine, http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2676 To do that will require enormous political capital. On the verge of a spectacular victory in Iraq, Bush may have that capital within his reach. But it ain't over till it's over, and Bush is entirely aware that while the war in Iraq rages, the American public and American markets will be on an emotional roller coaster. But his priorities are clear. He told us, "I'm not going to let the stock market drive the war. Tommy Franks drives the war." But if this war concludes as favorably as it looks like it just might, then Bush is going to emerge with all the political capital he needs. And he told us that he's committed to spending it. He told us that a president "is only here for a short while," and has to spend his political capital on "big projects." For the economy, Bush told us that means no less than a vision to "forever change this country into 'entrepreneurial heaven.'’
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Military Hydrogen – Popular Supporting hydrogen production for the military is popular John Dizard, staff writer Financial Times UK, Jan 31 2005, Bush, Iraq and the hydrogen economy There can be no one left who thinks that yesterday's elections in Iraq will have ended the political instability in the Middle East. It is now assumed even by the US military leadership that the forces in Iraq cannot be significantly decreased for years. There is going
to be more and more political pressure to achieve energy independence rather than face the prospect of endless military occupations of sources of oil. The closest thing to an independence plan produced by the Bush administration or the energy industry is the hydrogen economy. The idea is to convert our vehicles, ships, and aircraft to burn the pollution free fuel in various forms. It would solve a problem, but it could take 20 years or so.
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Nuclear Power – GOP and lobbies like Nuclear plants are popluar with the GOP and big businesses Meir Carasso Ph.D. degree in Engineering from the University of California in Berkeley energy policy formulation and analysis he worked for the U.S. and California. governments, 2005, Nuclear Power Looks Worse Than Ever, Daily Camera, http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0430-24.htmz President Bush
is promoting the use of nuclear power plants to generate electricity. It seems a political choice. Investing in nuclear power plants can be attempted only by very large corporations, of the kind that are in his support base. They belong to a very exclusive big-money club, and there are many billions of dollars at stake. But to belong, one also has to be willing to forget Three Mile Island, to forget market economics, nuclear proliferation, radioactive waste and, in particular, to forget nuclear terrorism. The nuclear industry, unlike, say, the automobile industry, is not a selfsufficient, commercial industry. From its inception in the late 1950's, the commercial nuclear power enterprise in this country developed a dual personality, as it were. It is schizophrenic. It had to be, and is entirely dependent on agencies of the federal government. The reason is that what makes a nuclear power plant "nuclear" is its fissionable fuel, and nuclear fuel is radioactive. Because radioactive materials are toxic, and concerns of national security, the government today has to be a party to every phase of nuclear power generation, from beginning to end.
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Nuclear – Popular (Pub, Dems) Nuclear power is popular with dems and public – safer now, and overrides Reid’s opposition James Hoare, Environment & Climate News, February 1, 2007, Democrat Group Calls for More Nuclear Power, The Heartland Institute, http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20509 Nuclear power offers a safe and economical way to meet anticipated growth in American energy demand, according to an October 2006 report by the Progressive Policy Institute, a policy arm of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The report, "A Progressive Energy Platform," praises nuclear power as a key weapon against asserted global climate change and air quality concerns. "Nuclear power holds great potential to be an integral part of a diversified energy portfolio for America," the report states. "It produces no greenhouse gas emissions, so it can help clean up the air and combat climate change." New Technological Advances Key to the DLC's support for nuclear power are technological advances that substantially improve on an already impressive safety and environmental record. "New plant designs promise to produce power more safely and economically than first-generation facilities," the report explains. "For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has certified three new designs that would use significantly fewer pumps, pipes, valves, and cables than first-generation facilities. "That will reduce the plants' complexity, making them easier to inspect and maintain," the report continues. "From a safety perspective, the new plants rely on natural forces such as gravity, natural circulation, and condensation, assuring safe shutdown even in the event of an accident." The report also notes further advances in nuclear plant design. "In addition to these three new approved designs," the report adds, "at least four other designs may soon win NRC approval. Among these is the promising modular, 'pebble bed' reactor design. As the name suggests, these smaller plants would use hundreds of thousands of uranium pebbles rather than large cores to generate power. As researchers at MIT recently concluded, these pebbles burn more completely than their traditional counterparts." Deregulation Needed The report stresses, however, that technological advances such as pebble bed reactors require a great deal of time to navigate through regulatory processes and actually get built. As a result, the report encourages Democrats to take action now to remove regulatory hurdles that slow the development and construction process. "It will take time to bring these next-generation facilities online. Progressives should support efforts to expedite the process," the report urges. "We certainly welcome the Progressive Policy Institute support," Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Kerekes said. "It reflects the fact that there is considerable bipartisan support for nuclear energy and there has been such support for a long time. "We anticipate this report will have a positive impact among Democrats and among citizens as a whole," Kerekes added. "Support for clean, safe, and economical nuclear power continues to build all across America." Political Landscape in Flux The DLC's support for nuclear power may undermine efforts by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to block completion of the Yucca Mountain storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. On December 7 Reid's clerk, Drew Wilson, told attendees at a nuclear power conference that Reid "is not going to change" his opposition to Yucca Mountain and that he will do whatever he can to block legislation that would assist completion of the facility. "It won't be moving for long if the majority leader is controlling the agenda," Wilson said of any proposed Yucca Mountain legislation. While the project "is not proceeding at the pace we would like," Kerekes said, he expects DLC support for nuclear power to minimize Reid's influence in blocking Yucca Mountain progress. "Harry Reid has acknowledged in the past that he alone cannot kill the program," said Kerekes. "There is broad public support for nuclear power," Kerekes continued. "And until Yucca comes online, used fuel must be stored in many places around the country, against the wishes of citizens who desire one safe, centralized storage facility."
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Nuclear – McCain McCain and GOP control nuclear power – they support it strongly compared to Obama and dems David Kestenbaum, Correspondent, Science Desk, July 21, 2008, NPR, Nuclear Power A Thorny Issue For Candidates, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92690120 Nuclear power doesn't usually make for an applause line in a stump speech, but it has come up on the campaign trail. Both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain see it as a way to combat climate change, though they've sometimes chosen their words with care. Of the two, McCain is the most comfortable with the topic. As a Navy pilot, he landed on aircraft
carriers, which today are essentially floating nuclear-powered cities. McCain calls nuclear "one of the cleanest, safest and most reliable energy sources on Earth." "If we want to arrest global warming, then nuclear energy is a powerful, powerful ally in that cause," he said in a May speech. McCain's enthusiasm for nuclear has put him in unusual territory for a Republican: He's been praising the French, who generate 80 percent of their power from nuclear. Obama's position is also somewhat unusual for a Democrat: He thinks nuclear power might be a good idea. The question came up during an early Democratic primary debate. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards went first, saying he did not favor nuclear power. Obama went next. "I actually think we should explore nuclear power as part of the mix," he said, before pivoting to solar energy, a much safer topic.
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AT: Dems hate Nuclear (elections/agenda) Dems are ambivalent on the issue Dallas Morning News, 1-27-08, ELIZABETH SOUDER, Nuclear plants become a factor in elections, http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/national/stories/DN-nukes_27bus.ART.State.Edition1.2af68e5.html Democratic voters haven't come to a consensus either. "It's clearly a mixed bag," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, head of the Texas office for Public Citizen, which opposes nuclear power. "Even people who were strong anti-nukers are beginning to have that conversation again." Dean Rindy, head of Rindy Miller Media, a Democratic political consulting firm in Austin, said most people, including the presidential candidates, haven't been forced to choose a position on nuclear power yet. So even the most connected politicos can't predict which way the party will go. "There hasn't been a lot of passionate debate on this in Democratic caucuses. The debate is just beginning, really," said Mr. Rindy, who opposes nuclear power and worked on environmental efforts surrounding Barton Springs in Austin. It's difficult to categorize the liberals who support nuclear power and those who do not. It's not necessarily young students conscious of climate change vs. aging anti-nuke hippies. And it's not always environmental activists vs. business types. Tony Kreindler, a spokesman for Environmental Defense, said his group reconsidered its anti-nuclear stance a few years ago. Now the environmental advocacy group says nuclear power is an important lowcarbon energy option, though members still worry about safety. The dividing line seems to be between people who are motivated to compromise with the energy industry and those who want to devote resources solely to renewable power. Uranium used in nuclear plants isn't a renewable fuel. "Members of the political class, particularly senators and congressmen who have those nuclear facilities in their districts, are customarily supportive of nuclear power," said Mr. Freeman of the Nuclear Energy Institute. All three top Democratic candidates have received donations from employees of nuclear power companies. The amount tends to match the candidate's acceptance of nuclear power and tends to be higher than what Republican candidates have received from the same companies.
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NASA – PC links Funding NASA costs pol cap Andrew Lawler, senior writer with Science Magazine and Freelance Journalist, 12 December 2003, Science: Vol. 302. no. 5652, p. 1873HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT: Bush Plan for NASA: Watch This Space, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5652/1873?ck=nck Congressional aides and other observers warn that any new mission will have to fit into an agency budget already strained by repairs to the space shuttle, the completion of the space station, and a new series of technologically advanced planetary probes, not to mention development of a shuttle alternative. NASA should first resolve the problems facing the shuttle and station systems, they say. "We've gotten so far into a hole in the past 30 years, it will take a lot of money and political capital to get us out before you go searching for something new," says George Washington University political scientist John Logsdon, a member of the panel that reviewed the Columbia accident.
Expanding NASA costs pol cap – Columbia, war on terror, and deficits Andrew Lawler, senior writer with Science Magazine and Freelance Journalist, 12 December 2003, Science: Vol. 302. no. 5652, p. 1873HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT: Bush Plan for NASA: Watch This Space, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/302/5652/1873?ck=nck U.S. space enthusiasts are blessed and cursed by President John F. Kennedy's 1961 call to go to the moon by the end of the decade. Although his bold vision was realized, other presidents have had less luck winning support for human space flight. President Ronald
Reagan's 1984 proposal to build a space station has taken vastly more time, money, and political capital than anticipated, and President George H. W. Bush's 1989 plan to return to the moon and land on Mars never left the ground. Now Bush's son is pondering whether to propose a dramatic new direction for NASA in the wake of February's Columbia accident. Sources say that a small team of senior White House and federal agency officials has finished work on a tightly held set of options for the president. But in a Washington focused on the war against terrorism, rising federal deficits, and the 2004 election campaign, any human space flight proposal faces skepticism--or worse. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has already battled skeptics in the Administration--and lost. White House officials say that O'Keefe pushed this fall for a dramatic increase in the agency's $15 billion budget to begin work that would ultimately lead to human Mars missions. But that high price tag--$5 billion annually for at least the next 4 years, according to those sources--was
rejected as unrealistic.
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NASA - PC Link Funding NASA costs political capital Frank Sietzen Jr., UPI staff writer, 2004, NASA Faces Final Budget Debate, UPI, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-04zm.html Washington DC (UPI) Sep 16, 2004 If NASA's battle over its fiscal year 2005 budget were a baseball game, it now would be in bottom of the eighth inning with score tied -- and Congress at bat. Having failed to win House of Representatives approval for funding of President Bush's ambitious plan to send astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars, NASA now faces a similar battle next week in the Senate. There, the appropriations subcommittee that reviews the budgets of the Veterans Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and independent agencies -- including NASA -likewise may not approve new funds for the Bush space plan. If this happens, and Congress fails to include the $866 million requested by the administration in its final legislation, it would effectively kill all of the new space projects the president has sought. This latest cliff-hanger was triggered last week by tight spending limits imposed on subcommittee appropriators. Shortfalls in the VA, housing and loan-guarantee budget areas have left the chairman, Sen. Christopher S. Kit Bond, R-Mo., with insufficient room to cover the needs of the agencies under his purview. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe once told United Press International he considered these maneuvers a political game of chicken. He may well be right about that. At stake are potential billions of dollars in development contracts for the U.S. aerospace firms that would design and manufacture the new space vehicles, equipment, robots and launching rockets for the Bush space plan. NASA already has started the countdown to release of a January 2005 request for proposals for the new moonship -- called the crew exploration vehicle or CEV -as well as the booster rocket to lift it into space. Last week, the agency awarded some $27 million in study contracts to 11 firms -- including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and smaller businesses and non-profits -- to start planning the lunar missions and related scientific research programs. Those funds came out of unspent money remaining in fiscal year 2004, which ends Sept. 30. If the appropriations bill actually moves to the Senate floor for a vote, it could trigger the first serious political debate about space spending since the 1989 and 1990 fights over the International Space Station. Those funding battles, which occurred under President George H.W. Bush, came within a single vote of canceling the station before the administration prevailed. What was canceled, however, was another Bush 41 space initiative -- a dream by the current president's father to send astronauts back to the moon and onward to Mars. The idea was less detailed and developed than the project proposed by the current president, and it failed to pass either house of Congress and eventually was abandoned. Regarding the latest funding effort, O'Keefe -- himself a former Senate staffer -- could forestall the budget ax if he manages to prevent the appropriations bill from receiving a vote on the Senate floor and exploiting its tightly constrained calendar. Time is running out before the pre-election congressional recess, so any unfinished business would be held over until the post-election, lame-duck Congress returns. Such a strategy would mirror what happened in the House, where members of the coinciding appropriations subcommittee killed Bush's new space exploration budget, but failed to move the corpse to the floor. Majority Leader, Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, has vowed to block the bill from getting to the floor if it does not contain the requested money. Further upping the ante, White House officials have let it be known the president would veto any space spending bill that excluded funds for his new project. O'Keefe reminded senators on the appropriations subcommittee of this fact last week. O'Keefe also might have one more budget trick up his sleeve: If either the House or the Senate fails to approve a separate space appropriations bill, he might urge NASA's supporters in Congress to attempt to link it with other, uncompleted spending measures in a so-called omnibus bill. It might even be possible, under this strategy, to add more funds in the House-Senate conference than either side had approved separately. The move would be tricky, however, and it could be quite costly for O'Keefe in terms of political capital.
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GOP hates Natives GOP opposes bills supporting natives Tanasi Journal, 17 August 2007, Native American Community Shocked by Senate Republican Steering Committee Opposition, http://www.tanasijournal.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=480&Itemid=1&ed=68 Blow after blow, the U.S. Senate Republican Steering Committee continues to block all legislation that benefits Indian people. The Senate Republican Steering Committee is a small group of Senators who have been working together to put secret "holds" on all legislation benefiting Indian tribes and Indian people. Indian Country has had strong ties to the Republican Party through the Indian Self-Determination Policy and respect for the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly recognizes the treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, religious freedom, and the shared values of federalism that encourage local decision-making. Tribal leaders and the Republican Party share strong interests in law enforcement, economic development, energy, the military, veterans, and many other issues. "At first we thought that it was coincidence that so many bills on Native issues were
being blocked by members of the Republican Steering Committee," said National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) President Joe A. Garcia. "But it is clear now that it is not. NCAI is a non-partisan organization that has built successful relationships on both sides of the aisle for many decades. It is a very small number of Republican Senators, but we must address this obstructionism that stops all legislation no matter how bi-partisan and non-controversial."
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AT: No spillover Vote Switching is Real – ideology is minimal Bond & Fleisher, Professor in Political Science - Texas A&M & Professor in Political Science - Fordham 19 96 (Jon R. and Richard The President in Legislation) pg 54
In a previous study of presidential-congressional relations from Eisenhower to Ford, we found that ideological conflict between the president and members of Congress was associated with lower support. In general, as ideological differences increase, the president tends to lose support from members of both parties at about the same rate, although support from the opposition is lower at all levels of ideological conflict (Bond and Fleisher 1980, 75). Thus ideological forces in Congress often cause the formation of bipartisan coalitions to support or oppose the president's policy preferences. These ideological forces help explain why majority presidents have only a limited advantage over minority presidents in building majority support for their positions in Congress. Majority presidents inevitably experience defections of partisans who have ideologies in conflict with theirs. Minority presidents, on the other hand, can frequently build working majorities composed of their partisan base and like-minded members of the opposition. While political values shared between the president and members of Congress provide an important linkage source, the effects of ideology are limited for several reasons. First, most members of Congress are pragmatic politicians who do not have views and preferences at the extremes of a liberal-conservative continuum. Because the typical American voter is not strongly ideological, most representatives' electoral self-interest is probably best served by avoiding ideological extremes. As noted above, ideology is a less important voting cue for moderates than it is for ideological extremists (Kingdon 1981, 268). Second, many votes that may be important to the president do not involve ideological issues. Distributive or "porkbarrel" programs, for example, typically do not produce ideological divisions. Even conservatives who want to cut domestic spending and liberals who want to reduce defense spending work to protect domestic and defense programs in their districts. Presidents who attempt to tamper with these programs are likely to find few friends in Congress, as President Carter discovered when he opposed several water projects in 1977, and as President Reagan discovered when he vetoed the highway bill in 1987. Finally, ideological voting blocs are relatively informal coalitions composed of individuals who have similar values. The "conservative coalition" of Republicans and southern Democrats, for example, appears on certain votes and sometimes has a significant influence on the outcome of floor votes (Shelley 1983; Brady and Bullock 1980; Manley 1973). But this
coalition of conservatives has no formal organization with elected leaders to serve as a communication and information center. Although there are several ideologies.
Political capital spills over by controlling spin – War on terror proves Ruy Teixeira, Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and American Progress, Spring 2007, Moving Left? Bush’s Decline and American Liberalism, Dissent Magazine, http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=779 Furthermore, surely no
single issue has contributed more to the Bush administration’s ability to pursue a hard-right agenda than the war on terror—the political capital afforded by that issue has been the main reason Bush has been, until recently, so successful in turning the country to the right. But now that political capital has evaporated precisely because of the Iraq War. Indeed, the most recent polls suggest that it will not be long before Bush’s approval rating on handling terrorism dips below 40 percent, an extraordinary development. This lack of political capital means that the GOP now
has few options left with which to push its right-wing policies on a less and less interested public. That, in turn, means that progressive policy views held by the public can more easily come to the fore and push the political debate to the left.
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No Spillover Bush doesn’t believe capital spills over between issues Andrew, LEE The Rose Institute of State & Local Government – Claremont McKenna College – Presented at the Georgia Political Science Association 2005 Conference “Invest or Spend?:Political capital and Statements of Administration Policy in the First Term of the George W. Bush Presidency,” http://as.clayton.edu/trachtenberg/2005%20Proceedings%20Lee.pdf] Instead of investing political capital, the president may spend it on an initiative. When spending political capital, the president does not necessarily expect higher approval ratings. President Clinton’s first term actions to balance the budget and normalize trade with China did not yield returns. In fact, balancing the budget in 1993 was a reason for the change of congressional control from the Democrats to the Republicans (Panetta 2002, 201-02). In President Bush’s first term, he accrued a large amount of capital from the September 11th attacks, and subsequently spent a substantial portion pursuing the Iraq war. Political capital is not equal in all policy areas. Commenting on President Clinton’s term, President George W. Bush said, “I felt like he tried to spend capital on issues that he didn't have any capital on at first, like health care” (quoted in Suellentrop 2004). In spending political capital, the president diminishes his political strength by initiating or pushing a policy proposal with no intent on return. A president can spend capital for noble goals such as a balanced budget, the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime, or to veto legislation. The theory of political capital as it relates to SAPs is that presidents are more likely to spend political capital through a presidential veto because they have the power to do so. In times of increased political capital, the relative strength of SAP wording will also increase because the president has greater flexibility to take stands on particular issues. This analysis is a case study of the first Bush term’s adherence to this hypothesis.
The president cannot direct leadership towards already prioritized Congress. Bond & Fleisher, Professor in Political Science - Texas A&M & Professor in Political Science - Fordham 1996 (Jon R. and Richard The President in Legislation) pg 33
Presidential leadership skill operates at the margin because "members of Congress have their own political needs and priorities, which the president, whoever he is, is mostly powerless to affect" (King 1983, 265). In summary, the literature identifies political parties, political ideology, popularity with the public, and presidential leadership skill as linkage agents that can serve as sources of presidential support in Congress. Each source is characterized by inherent limitations, and there is no guarantee that the president will be able to exploit the potential advantages to secure the votes he needs. Knowledge of the effects and limitations of the systematic forces that influence congressional behavior provides a foundation for a theory to explain the linkage between the president and Congress. Following is a theoretical framework built upon this knowledge.
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Cap and trade link Cap and trade is unpopular in Congress Josh Patashnik, Harvard Political Review editor-in-chief and former UC member, 6-6-08, Gaming Out Cap-and-Trade in the Next Congress, blog, the New Republic, http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2008/06/06/gaming-out-cap-andtrade-in-the-next-congress.aspx As Brad notes, Lieberman–Warner didn't come close to getting the 60 votes needed for cloture this year. It got 48 votes (roll call here), plus pledges from six more senators who missed the vote but say they would have voted for cloture. So that means it came up six votes short. Where might those votes come from if a similar bill is brought up next year? Obviously, a whip count this far out is very, very rough, but here's some idea. Among the ten senators who missed the vote and didn't pledge to support cloture, there are two Democrats: West Virginia's Robert Byrd and North Dakota's Kent Conrad. Byrd apparently opposed the bill (although his fellow Mountain Stater, Jay Rockefeller, voted for cloture), so getting his vote seems unlikely. Conrad was apparently on the fence, and his home-state comrade, Byron Dorgan, voted no. Among the Republicans who didn't vote, only Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter seems like the type who might be persuaded to vote for cloture; perhaps Judd Gregg, who will face re-election in 2010 in environmentally conscious New Hampshire, is also a possibility. If, say, two of those four end up supporting cloture, proponents of cap-and-trade would have to pick up four votes from the "no" group without losing any supporters (it's conceivable that someone like Norm Coleman or Elizabeth Dole might suddenly have a change of heart when they're not facing tough re-election fights). Wayne Allard of Colorado and Pete Domenici of New Mexico could well be replaced by the two Udalls. Then you'd have to either cobble together two more votes from among the four Democrats who voted no--Dorgan, Tim Johnson (S.D.), Mary Landrieu (La.), and Sherrod Brown (Ohio); win an upset victory over someone like Texas's John Cornyn or Mississippi's Roger Wicker; or pick up a stray Republican or two (probably by bribing them with pork). All in all, it
looks like it's going to be an uphill fight unless the occupant of the White House decides to expend some political capital on it. It probably also wouldn't hurt if gas prices went down in the interim, taking some of the emotional edge off the vote, but what are the odds of that?
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