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Last Shutdown a Lesson Lost on Capitol Hill

September 28, 2013 by

“I’ll buy you a Coke Zero if you can tell me what the government shutdown was about in ’95,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who was among the raucous House freshmen then. “What was the issue? Nobody remembers!”

Previous Congresses and administrations managed to find a way out of their own conflagrations. In fact, the last major shutdowns, in late 1995 and early 1996, paved the way for sweeping bipartisan compromises, including tax and budget changes that both Congressional Republicans and President Bill Clinton were pleased to call their own.

The entire exercise solidified a pattern of high-pressure, low-skill budget showdowns for the next generation, but a sinewy economy made it all seem O.K.

“It’s easy to look back and say it was all planned that way,” said Leon E. Panetta, Mr. Obama’s former defense secretary and Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff during the shutdowns. “But I have to tell you, it was a day-to-day crisis, and you never quite knew what the hell was going to happen.”

Whether those stuck in some Congressional fiscal jam in 2033 will study 2013 for lessons on how a divided Washington finally pulled back from the brink with a last-minute compromise or engaged in a meltdown that harmed the economy and ended careers is yet to be determined. But in many ways, Washington of today feels a lot like 1995-96, when the government shut down twice over the course of a month.

Then, as now, partisan rancor over federal spending burned hotly. Congressional Republicans complained bitterly about the Democratic president, jabbing at him for playing too much golf and opposing military action in a factionalized foreign land.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, then on a lower rung of leadership, was tormented by House freshmen who were trying to use spending agreements to undo social policy, lamenting that “you can’t bring about this much change without a lot of listening and hand-holding.”

Partisan divides over the role and scope of government are even deeper now, with the procedures of government thrown into such chaos that Republican senators took to the floor last week to offer something close to a comedy roast of one of their own, Ted Cruz of Texas. The lessons of the Clinton-era deadlock, which damaged the Republican Party while restoring a weakened president, may be elusive.

Unlike this Congress, both chambers then were ruled by one party, which worked in concert, at least in the beginning, to undermine a president who, unlike Mr. Obama, was up for re-election. Mr. Clinton engaged in daily castigations of Congress while keeping alive negotiations with his adversaries, two things Mr. Obama eschews.

Further, Mr. Clinton’s incipient opponent back then, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, was the majority leader with a centrist agenda that is hard to find among current Senate Republicans. “It’s mind boggling,” Mr. Dole said of the current budget impasse. “The difference between then and now is the Senate said enough is enough.” (Also, no senator performed a fake filibuster as Mr. Cruz did last week. They were old-fashioned that way.)

An important structural difference exists as well: before the shutdowns of 1995-96, Congress had already passed numerous appropriations bills to finance main areas of government. Congress today has passed zero, the net result of an earmark ban (money to fix a bridge tends to be the best fixer for hurt feelings) and a divided opinion in the House and Senate over how much money the government is actually allowed to spend.

“This would be as complete a government shutdown as you can get,” said Stan Collender, a veteran federal budget expert.

Stalemates between Congress and the White House over spending have existed since the government began, but they became more severe during the 1970s, leading to an increased number of stopgap spending agreements. From that ensued increasingly protracted fights over how to fix those spending gaps, and the spending bills became proxies for other policy battles.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan, sparring with Democrats over spending, military aid to Nicaragua and other issues, initiated a shutdown of various cabinet-level agencies for a short period. President George Bush had his own fight with Congress over discretionary spending, which led to a shutdown in 1990.

In the 1996 fiscal year, which featured the two most infamous shutdowns in American history, the battle between Congress and Mr. Clinton centered principally around how to balance the budget, with a side fight over Medicare premiums that ultimately provoked the shutdown. Republicans wore lapel pins calling for a balanced budget.

The current fight over a doomed Republican plan to deprive Mr. Obama’s health care law of money, Mr. Graham said, “is about taking a legislative proposal, the signature issue of the president, and asking him to walk away from it. I just don’t see that as being the best tactic.”

In stark contrast to the current fight, the Republican game plan in the mid-1990s came from the top. The speaker at the time, Newt Gingrich, fresh off a popular campaign to take over the House, led the shutdown strategy, and his members largely rallied around it. Senate Republicans, while dubious about the politics, went along for the ride.

Today, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, is plagued by both his minority status and a primary challenge from the right. He has done little to bridge the gap between Republicans willing to fight to the end and those who want to move on. But the latest crop of Republican senators often seems impervious to pressure from their leaders.

It was Mr. Dole, with his presidential ambitions affirmed and his control of his conference secure, who pulled the plug on Mr. Gingrich and his revolutionaries.

Mr. Dole said his biggest regret was not moving sooner. “I think we could have ended it a day or two earlier,” he said, “because Clinton was eating our lunch.”

Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/politics/last-shutdown-a-lesson-lost-on-capitol-hill.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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European Union Planning Tough Sanctions on Iran

January 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Officials hope to announce a final plan at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

But senior French officials are concerned that these measures, even in combination with sanctions on financial transactions with Iran announced by Washington, will not be strong enough to push the Iranian government into serious, substantive negotiations on its nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at producing weapons.

French officials say that the effort to increase pressure on Tehran is a crucial element in a “dual track” strategy — inflicting pain through sanctions in order to prompt substantive negotiations to halt Iran’s enrichment of uranium, as the United Nations Security Council has demanded. But even accelerated sanctions are hard to put into effect and slow to work, while Iran is changing the game by moving more of its enrichment centrifuges into deep tunnels inside mountains, where they will be much harder to attack militarily.

France is eager to avoid military action against Iran. French officials do not doubt that Israel will do all it can to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but they consider that an Israeli attack on Tehran would be counterproductive, only delaying the Iranian program and strengthening a weakened Islamic leadership.

“We must do everything possible to avoid an Israeli attack on Iran,” said a senior French official, “even if it means a rise in the price of oil and gasoline.” If the sanctions on Iran “are massive, they can have a big impact, with high unemployment and a fall in the rial,” Iran’s currency. In fact, the rial has hit historic lows against the dollar this week.

But with Iran moving its centrifuges deep underground, the official said, “this changes the landscape.”

“This time it really is a race. It’s why we are pushing so hard. We want to act fast.” Still, the official said, France recognizes that the possibility of military action represents another form of pressure on Iran to negotiate.

In his annual speech on French diplomacy on Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran of lying, and he denounced what he called its “senseless race for a nuclear bomb.” He called for “much stronger, much more decisive” sanctions, saying that “time is running out” and “everything must be done to avoid” international military intervention.

Iran says that it is enriching uranium solely for peaceful uses and denies a military intent. But few in the West believe Tehran, which has not cooperated fully with inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has been pursuing some technologies that have only a military use.

As existing sanctions bite, Tehran is talking both tough and soft, promising to shut the Strait of Hormuz in the case of an oil embargo and at the same time saying that it is ready to resume negotiations with the six-nation group, led by the European Union, which includes the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China — plus Germany.

Russia and Turkey are already heralding Tehran’s willingness to return to the table. On Thursday, alongside the Iranian foreign minister in Istanbul, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that Iran was ready for talks. “The sides have confirmed their willingness,” he said. “Today is the day for negotiations and a solution.”

But French officials say that Tehran has not responded to an October letter from the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, offering a resumption of talks, so long as there are no preconditions and Iran is willing to discuss the main issue, which is its nuclear enrichment program.

During the last talks a year ago, Iran refused to discuss its nuclear program and said that before any negotiations, the Security Council must first lift all sanctions already in place and recognize Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iran also said it was no longer interested in swapping a large part of its enriched uranium in return for fuel rods for a research medical reactor in Tehran.

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=aead84471e8ebec311d56ba736937a1d

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Iran Offers Inspectors ‘Full Supervision’ of Nuclear Program

September 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The proposal came from Fereydoon Abbasi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, who was designated by the United Nations in 2007 as a scientist involved in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile activities, and, as such, subject to a freeze on his assets and limitations on his travel. He narrowly escaped an assassination attempt last year.

Mr. Abbasi’s offer was vaguely worded. It was far from clear what he meant by “full supervision,” after several years in which Iran has refused to turn over documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency or allow interviews of its most important nuclear scientists. The government has also restricted where inspectors could travel.

Nonetheless, the overture is the first time since October 2009 that Iran has indicated a willingness to negotiate over the program, and one senior Obama administration official said the offer suggested “that the sanctions are wearing on the leadership.”

Mr. Abbasi made his statement to the Iranian Student News Agency, which is considered a semiofficial organ and has been used to convey changes of position in the past. “We proposed that the agency keep Iran’s nuclear program and activities under full supervision for five years, provided that sanctions against Iran are lifted,” he told the news agency.

In recent weeks Russia has intervened in an effort to get Iran to make a serious offer to relieve some of the pressure on Iran, in part out of concern that the sanctions were sharply interfering with its energy trade with Iran. But there is also worry that Iran’s recent decision to move some of its uranium enrichment program to a well-protected underground site could encourage those in Israel who have pressed for military action before it is too late to slow the program.

So far, the United Nations has issued four sets of sanctions, each intended to increase the economic pressure on Iran. But the effects have been spotty at best, and a run-up in oil prices this year essentially undermined much of the economic effects. Nonetheless, Iran has run into difficulties obtaining parts for its nuclear program, its ships have been denied insurance and its trade with much of Europe has been sharply restricted.

Mr. Abbasi was appointed to his current job in February, but before that he was well known to American, European and Israeli intelligence agencies. Officially, he worked at Shahid Beheshti University before taking up his current post, and he was on his way there last November when a “sticky bomb” was attached to his car. He narrowly escaped before it went off. One of his fellow scientists, heading to the university that morning on the other side of Tehran, was not so lucky, and he died in a nearly simultaneous attack.

Mr. Abbasi is widely believed, by nuclear inspectors and several intelligence agencies, to be working closely with Mohsen Fakhirizadeh, another academic, who is believed to head some of the central research into how to create nuclear weapons. He, too, is identified on the United Nations list.

In the fall of 2009, in its only real negotiation with the Iranian government, the Obama administration proposed that Iran agree to a fuel swap in which the West would provide an outside supply of fresh nuclear fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. In return, Iran would agree to a conditional cessation of its production of uranium, which can be used for nuclear power plants or, with further enrichment, for nuclear weapons.

A deal was struck in Vienna but was rejected once Iranian negotiators took it back to Tehran. “We believe it was killed by the supreme leader,” one of President Obama’s aides said earlier this year, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s most senior cleric.

Mr. Abbasi said recently that the deal was dead and would not be revived.

In past years, Iran has agreed to specific “work plans” with the international atomic agency to allow inspections or turn over documents. But all of them have fallen apart. Iran has dismissed the agency’s questions about “possible military dimensions” of its program — a diplomatic phrase referring to evidence the country sought to build nuclear warheads — by saying that it was fabricated by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli Mossad.

At the same time, Iran has allowed regular access to the main nuclear site at Natanz and periodic access to a much newer installation near the holy city of Qum, which Iran made public after it was clear that Western intelligence agencies had found it.

The spotty nature of Iran’s responses explains why the phrase “full supervision” is so important to United Nations inspectors and the group of Western allies who have been the most vigorous in enforcing the sanctions. If it means that inspectors could visit all the sites on their list, interview scientists who are believed to be linked to military work and review the documents that Iran has declined to turn over, it would mark a significant breakthrough.

But as one American intelligence official put it recently, “We have a list of tunnels to look at that is so long, it would take years.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=eacbaf54657820b1f5cc029332c58ba5

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Oil Prices Ease as Libyan Rebels Plan to Resume Production

March 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Over the last two days, the rebels have seized several towns with important oil installations that they said would enable them to produce and export crude. The rebels said they would able to produce up to 130,000 barrels of crude a day, still less than a tenth of what Libya exported before turmoil erupted last month.

While the amount of oil the rebels said they could export was small, Libyan oil is particularly valued on world markets because it is high quality, needs little refining and is particularly well suited for European diesel markets. Although there is concern that the rebel advance may prove to be fleeting, oil traders responded to their victories by pushing down the price of most world oil benchmarks, albeit modestly.

In early trading in New York, the price of light sweet crude was down $1.64 a barrel to $103.76. As the morning progressed, prices began to drift higher, and by afternoon had reached $104.61, still a decline of 79 cents. The price is 8 percent higher than it was a month ago, and 30 percent higher than a year ago, threatening the global economic recovery.

President Obama planned to address the nation Monday night regarding the United States involvement in Libya. The administration has been accused of failing to make its goals clear with regard to the action in Libya.

Some oil analysts expressed doubts the Libyan advance would make a lasting impact. Tanker companies will need to find ways to obtain insurance before they will venture into Libyan ports, analysts noted, and the rebels’ ability to retain control over oil terminals may be tested.

“With military action continuing and sanctions very much in place, it will be hard to move oil out of the country,” Barclays Capital reported in a research note. “There isn’t much clarity as to how many of the actual oil fields are under the control of the rebels.”

Nevertheless, it was the third day in a row that oil prices fell as the rebels’ fortunes improved. Another cause for the drop in oil prices is the strengthening of the dollar, which normally makes the commodity more expensive to buy in other currencies.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/business/global/29oil.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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