More than three months after Melissa Hathaway, the acting senior director for cybersecurity at the National Security Council, resigned, Obama still hasn't appointed a czar. Federal Times reports that the White House may be preparing to announce someone soon, perhaps around Thanksgiving.
President Obama admitted today that Guantanamo Bay prison will not close by his January 2010 deadline, and while he said he hoped to shutter it sometime next year, he declined to give a new deadline.
"People, I think understandably, are fearful after a lot of years where they were told that Guantanamo was critical to keep terrorists out," Obama said. Closing the prison is "also just technically hard," he added
With climate change legislation in the Senate stalled and the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill not gaining a foothold in the upper chamber, the administration has conceded that a binding global treaty cannot be signed during the December U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen. At an Asia Pacific summit, President Obama endorsed the idea of forging a "political agreement" that would lay the groundwork for a legally binding treaty to be negotiated later in 2010.
Many experts say that the stalled U.S. climate change legislation has delayed international talks, since some of the world's other biggest polluters, namely the developing countries of China and India, are unwilling to commit to greenhouse gas emissions cuts without a firm reduction target put forth by the United States. For its part though, the U.S. is hesitant to name a specific target without first passing domestic climate change legislation and also without commitments from other countries.
A team of liberal activists and Web sites -- including AMERICAblog and Daily Kos -- announced a kind of backward pledge drive in response to what it views as empty promises by President Obama to the gay community.
The groups are asking supporters to "pledge" they will not donate any money to the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America or the Obama campaign until the president's campaign promises are fulfilled -- meaning he must sign the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act.
"LGBT Americans, our families, and our friends kept our promise at the ballot box, we now expect President Obama to keep his in the White House," wrote bloggers at AMERICAblog.
The pledge drive -- also termed a "boycott" and a "pause" by media and bloggers -- is the latest uprising by Obama's gay supporters, who are growing outwardly dissatisfied with the rate of progress on issues important to them.
By Emily Vaughan
Likely due to bipartisan concerns about America’s aging farm population, Obama promised in his Blueprint for Change to provide tax incentives that help new farmers. And despite a crowded presidential agenda, farmers advocacy groups are positioning themselves to capitalize whenever they become the next priority.
Last year’s Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, commonly known as the Farm Bill, set federal farm policy effective until 2013. The law includes several loan programs for beginning farmers, but absent from the bill are any tax credits.
“The farm bill doesn’t usually deal with tax issues,” said Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Despite the fact that tax changes were included in the Farm Bill, there wasn’t much push to establish tax credits for beginning farmers. “We weren’t really prepared to make a push,” said Chuck Hassebrook, executive director for the Center for Rural Affairs.
Instead, the Farm Bill expanded some loan programs for beginning farmers, including the federal Down Payment Loan Program, which provides capital to new farmers to buy land and equipment -- typically the biggest barrier to opening a new farm. Under the new bill, the interest rate was lowered and the loans are guaranteed by the Department of Agriculture. “The program has just really been going gangbusters in the last year,” Hoefner said. During the first 14 years of the program, about 3,000 loans were issued, but there have been close to 1,500 in the last year alone, he said.
The Farm Bill also included a pilot program that matches up to $6,000 in a farmer’s savings account if the money is used to buy farmland and livestock, make early mortgage payments, or pay for similar expenses.
Still, the success of the Farm Bill’s loan strategy hasn’t made Obama’s promise obsolete, advocates say. “Loans are important, but access to the money does not necessarily get you access to the land,” Hoefner said. “Policy needs to work comprehensively and the tax incentive side is part of that equation.”
By putting cash back in the hands of beginning farmers, the tax incentives are “of a bit more value to the young person who’s trying to make some of their initial investments before they take on any substantial debt to buy land,” Hassebrook said. CFRA is currently working on developing a bill on microenterprise tax credits for small farmers and businesses, which they hope to add to a congressional tax bill. The idea is to be prepared by the time another tax bill goes through Congress.
There are two types of potential tax credits at the federal level, Hoefner said: a federal equivalent of the state tax-supported first-time farmer loans (or “aggie bonds”) and capital gains tax breaks. Currently, an IRS tax ruling makes federal aggie bonds impossible, and there hasn’t been much political will to overrule it. Congress did not include any provisions for changing the ruling in last year’s Farm Bill. But “the White House and Treasury could make the change administratively,” Hoefner said. “The ball is very much in their court, should they want to begin to fulfill the campaign pledge.”
Capital gains tax breaks -- if targeted specifically to beginning farmers -- would also help, Hoefner says. Several bills proposing that have been introduced in the last decade, but none have gone far. Now, it’s not even at the top of NSAC’s agenda, let alone that of any legislators. Hoefner anticipates his organization will start pushing for it next year.
Tax credit programs for beginning farmers exist in two states: Iowa and Nebraska. Under these programs, landowners get a tax credit for renting agricultural assets such as land, livestock or equipment to beginning farmers. CFRA helped with the passage of both programs, which help connect new and retiring farmers, says Traci Bruckner, assistant director for rural policy at CFRA.
Obama is the first president to specifically outline tax credits for new farmers, Hoefner said, but he doubts anyone in the administration is paying attention to it with bigger issues looming. Bruckner calls Obama’s promise a “first step in the process.”
Even if advocacy groups are ready, there’s no guarantee that tax credits will become law, especially given the country’s other economic challenges “We’re facing big deficits right now,” Hassebrook said. “There’s not going to be an immediate opportunity to create new tax incentives, more likely than not. But a lot of the success in passing legislation involves getting ready and prepared so that, when there is an opportunity, you’re ready to go.”
According to foreclosure properties tracker RealtyTrac, the number of foreclosures in the U.S. has continued to rise since May. However, the administration has still established no moratorium on foreclosures.
As the agency responsible for overseeing Gulf Coast recovery approaches its expiration date, it's still housed within the Department of Homeland Security. The Office of the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding isn't a sure thing to be extended, either -- although DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano indicated its duties would still be fulfilled. "The president and I see this the same way, which is that the question is not so much the names of the offices of the organizational boxes, but getting people in who will work effectively with the community, " Napolitano told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Other federal officials working on the recovery in New Orleans, including Tony Russell at the FEMA Transitional Recovery Office and the "Decision Team" headed by Charles Axton in cooperation with the state of Louisiana, are also under the aegis of Homeland Security.
In a new brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act, the Justice Department erased the controversial tone that had once forced Obama to invite angry gay leaders to the White House for a reconciliatory reception. In their newest attempt at defending a law the administration opposes, lawyers now brand the policy as "discriminatory."
The department's first attempt at defending DOMA -- which it's required to do -- was filled with arguments against homosexuality that are often made by the religious right. It equated gay marriage to legalizing incest and pedophilia.
The resulting uproar in the gay community led Obama to grant some benefits to partners of gay federal employees. But when critics pointed out health care wasn't included, the White House hosted an event where Obama, flanked by the first lady, tried to explain his "duty to uphold existing law" but conceded "we must do so in a way that does not exacerbate old divides." He also had to make the case that health care benefits couldn’t be granted to spouses without an act of Congress.
The new brief drops the inflammatory arguments and reiterates several times the administration’s stance.
"With respect to the merits, this Administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal," it states. "Consistent with the rule of law, however, the Department of Justice has long followed the practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality, even if the department disagrees with a particular statute as a policy matter, as it does here."
And in case that wasn't clear enough, Obama issued an official statement separating himself from the department's former tack: "This brief makes clear… that my Administration believes that the Act is discriminatory and should be repealed by Congress."
The Obama administration is persuading states to expand the use of test scores in judging teachers by connecting the practice to the $4.3 billion in stimulus money to be given out by the Education Department.
By ZACK HALE
The sheer size of the $787 billion stimulus package, much of which will be channeled to private contractors for "shovel-ready" projects, might seem to render hollow Obama's campaign promise to cut federal contract spending by at least 10 percent. While it remains to be seen whether Obama will cut spending that much, the early numbers suggest outflows to federal contractors are on pace to match last year’s totals.
To be sure, stimulus funds have been disbursed slowly up to this point, making it difficult to predict how much money the federal government will award to private contractors (see chart of recently announced stimulus spending below). According to Recovery.gov, only about $36 billion was paid out through the end of May, just $1.8 billion of which was awarded in federal contracts.
Combined with regular spending, the federal government has so far this year written checks for $146 billion on slightly more than 1 million federal contracts (see chart below). That's less than half the total spent in 2008 and about 3 million fewer contracts, largely because most of the stimulus money is being spent on the state and local level. These numbers will change, however, as the pace of recovery spending increases -- Obama announced Monday that the federal government will pump money into public works projects during the summer in an effort to create or save 600,000 jobs.
Tracking progress on Obama's reform-minded pledge is even more difficult because his promise of greater transparency is moving as slowly as stimulus funds. Critics have complained that the administration has taken too long to post spending data on Recovery.gov.
By ZACK HALE
As watchdogs try to assess the status of President Obama's promise to reform federal contracting, critics continue to complain that the administration has taken too long to post spending data on Recovery.gov.
Interestingly, Obama's transparency efforts dating from his time as a freshman senator seem to be faring better than the administration's newer ventures. Well before his move to the White House, Obama sponsored the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which required a single searchable Web site to provide specific information about federal contracts, such as the amount and type of the award, and the name of its recipient. The result -- USASpending.gov -- is still the most complete federal contracting database.
In late May, the site began posting detailed data identifying grants and contracts awarded under the Recovery Act -- a move that has caused a stir among government watchdog groups, such as OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation.
While he applauds the breadth and level of transparency USASpending.gov provides, OMB Watch Executive Director Gary Bass questions why the Office of Management and Budget's own Web site, Recovery.gov -- which was created with the explicit purpose of tracking stimulus funds -- is lagging far behind the site Obama laid the groundwork for in 2006.
Recovery.gov provides reams of general information on various agency programs but so far has failed to provide the kind of specifics about federal contracts that USAspending.gov is already posting.
Moreover, officials from the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board have said such figures won't be available on Recovery.gov until Oct. 10, the first time the OMB is required by law to make them available.
To be fair, Recovery.gov is a brand new Web site that, given its gargantuan task, will take time to perfect, said Ed Pound, a spokesman for Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery and Transparency board.
"You can expect a massive influx of data come October," Pound said.
But Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, said the OMB is treating the October deadline as the "drop-dead" date to get the site perfect, rather than posting the data incrementally as it becomes available.
"When you get swamped with data like that it becomes much harder for the public and journalists to sort through, and you're going to get an unmanageable amount of data all at once," Allison said. "Some people will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, but it's much better to get data in increments as opposed to all at once."
USASpending.gov makes its data publicly available via an API -- a tool used by Web developers to make sharing easy. USASpending.gov obtains its data from the Federal Data Procurement System -- a system that provides real-time data from agencies as they announce contracts.
"There should be no reason why you can't get this information from the agencies' [news] feeds," Bass said. "It exists, and taxpayers should be able to find it with ease."
The Supreme Court refused to consider a challenge to "don't ask, don't tell." Former Army Capt. James Pietrangelo II had asked the court to rule the policy unconstitutional. Meanwhile, the administration has not taken steps in that direction despite increasing impatience from the gay community.
The cram-down measure failed in the Senate on a 45-51 vote.
"The Freedom of Choice Act is not my highest legislative priority," Obama said during his third prime-time news conference. "The most important thing we can do is to tamp down some of the anger surrounding the issue to focus on those areas we can agree on." But he said that his position on abortion has not changed.
The White House posted the text of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act for comment on its blog on March 27, the day after the Senate passed its version of the bill. The House approved it the next week. Obama signed the bill into law today.
While Congress has continued to consider legislation aimed at financially strapped homeowners (subscription), a special provision related to medical costs has not been on the docket.
Obama noted in a signing statement accompanying the FY09 omnibus spending bill that he would make exceptions to a provision protecting whistleblowers. In the statement, Obama said: "I do not interpret this provision to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control, and correct employees' communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential."
To reach the goals set in his $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, the Washington Post reported, Obama "will need to hire tens of thousands of new federal government workers." While the Office of Management and Budget called hiring estimates premature and promised not to "bloat bureaucracy," outside organizations' predictions range from 100,000 to 260,000 people added to the federal ranks.
The page on WhiteHouse.gov detailing Obama's ethics pledges, including this one, was replaced with a message telling readers to "please check back soon" for updates related to the president's executive order placing limits on lobbyist activity.
The page on WhiteHouse.gov detailing Obama's ethics pledges, including this one, was replaced with a message telling readers to "please check back soon" for updates related to the president's executive order placing limits on lobbyist activity.
The page on WhiteHouse.gov detailing Obama's ethics pledges, including this one, was replaced with a message telling readers to "please check back soon" for updates related to the president's executive order placing limits on lobbyist activity. The page disappeared the day after Obama signed the order, and also the day after a Roll Call report on the administration's proposed ethics rules for Congress.
The page on WhiteHouse.gov detailing Obama's ethics pledges, including this one, was replaced with a message telling readers to "please check back soon" for updates related to the president's executive order placing limits on lobbyist activity.
Obama has met with Al Gore to discuss energy policy, but the former vice president has stated he has no interest in playing an official role within the administration.
