The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

S-CHIP is clearly causing some pain at Kuhl HQ. In the past couple of days, his office has made two new (to him) claims about the program, all in an apparent attempt to dodge the contention that he voted against America's kids.

The first claim is a press release which says that Kuhl actually voted for S-CHIP, because he voted for a continuing resolution that funded S-CHIP at its current levels. That near-unanimous vote was stopgap measure to prevent expiration of the current program while Congress and the President went through the veto-override-redraft cycle with the new version of the program. Kuhl did vote for it, but the headline ("Kuhl votes to Extend Childrens Healthcare with SCHIP") is extremely misleading -- the "extension" that everyone (but Kuhl) talks about is the real bill, not this temporary measure.

The second, and more interesting, argument concerns S-CHIP eligibility in New York State. The New York income limit for S-CHIP is 400% of the poverty line, which is a little over $80K for a family of four. Randy makes much of this in a recent blog post, and it is a real issue. The Water Buffalo Press has an in-depth examination that's worth reading. It includes a look at the eligibility requirements versus the stated rationale for S-CHIP. Realistically, most people at 400% of poverty have health coverage through their work. It's worth asking how raising the limit that high in New York will benefit low-income families who can't afford insurance.

Though this is the first time that Kuhl has raised this objection, it's a common Republican talking point. I asked Eric Massa about it three weeks ago. In essence, his response was that the issue comes down to the bottom line of how we distribute health care in this country. That's true, and it's a discussion we need to have. Unfortunately, the S-CHIP discussion is now at a soundbite level. Judging from Kuhl's various attempts to spin his S-CHIP vote, the Democrats' soundbite (Republicans vote against children) is sticking.

Randy Kuhl's latest blog post adds some facts to his contention that this Congress is slow. Kuhl claims that the current count of bills signed into law (82) is too few, and that too many of those bills (36) merely name post offices.

Absent from Kuhl's post is some important context. Let's compare the current Congress' numbers to the first session of the Republican-controlled 109th Congress. As of September 29, 2005, which, like today, was the day before the end of Congress' work that month, 76 laws had been signed by the President. Here's the last bill Bush signed on that day.

As for the issue of Post Offices, a little over 25% of the laws passed by the 109th Congress had to do with naming federal buildings.

The use of statistics without context is a classic, and annoying, political tactic. Nobody, other than an expert, has any idea how may bills the average Congress passes in nine months. Without context, Kuhl can spin a number into anything he wants it to be. With context, it becomes a non-issue. Always doubt a politician who bases an argument on bare numbers offered without context.

Randy Kuhl has a new blog entry re-iterating his opposition to Governor Spitzer's policy granting illegal immigrants drivers' licenses. In the post, Randy adds some facts to his earlier allegation that the 9/11 hijackers' possession of licenses helped them accomplish their attack. He also points to his support of the RealID Act in the 109th Congress as an example of how identification should be handled.

It's nice to see a substantive post on Kuhl's blog, and Kuhl identifies a number of real shortcomings in our immigration system. But the underlying fallacy of the post, and the RealID act, is the notion that better identification alone will somehow fight terrorism.

To understand this point, I have to untangle two threads going through Kuhl's post. The first is his list of fraud and deception used by the 9/11 hijackers and other terrorists. Randy quotes a report which details the ways that 94 terrorists were able to enter and remain in the US. The report found that 59 of those terrorists committed immigration fraud, and many of them relied on falsified documents "including driver's licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards, and immigration arrival records". Another common form of fraud was sham marriages.

These cases of immigration fraud are serious, but they have little to do with the Spitzer proposal. As Spitzer said when explaining his proposal: "The D.M.V. is not the I.N.S. [Immigration and Naturalization Service]". In issuing licenses, the DMV is concerned with making sure that drivers are qualified and insured. Like every other agency which relies on documents, the DMV participates in a web of trust, assuming that other document-issuing agencies are doing their jobs. It would be expensive and extremely inconvenient for the DMV to re-verify visas or naturalization documents. We can't afford to make the DMV into a proxy immigration agency.

So, in response to Kuhl's examples of terrorist fraud, the obvious answer is for the federal government to fix the problems in the INS that led to this fraud. The wrong answer is to use state government as a backstop for an incompetent bureaucracy. The DMV needs to stick to its knitting, which is making sure drivers are competent and insured. In that context, licensing illegal immigrants makes sense, because it will reduce insurance costs by increasing the number of uninsured motorists. The state estimates that the rule change will save New Yorkers $120 million yearly.

So, a bigger drivers' license bureaucracy isn't the answer to our immigration problems. A national id, like RealID, doesn't do the job, either. RealID is simply a better way to determine that person X is who he says he is. But knowing that X is really X doesn't tell us anything about X's intentions. Every one of the 9/11 hijackers presented a valid ID card before they boarded their planes. Even Ted Bundy had a valid drivers' license. If he had a super-valid, nationwide ID card, would he have been caught any sooner?

I don't need to go into the risks to liberty created by one standard, nationwide id. Ron Paul has that covered. This country has long resisted that move, and states are again fighting it. It's ironic that a "conservative" like Kuhl is championing this kind of big government program.

The bottom line in all of this is that New York State should feel free to issue drivers' licenses in whatever way they think will make the roads safer. And we shouldn't have to carry a nationwide id because identity is not intent. Randy Kuhl's diagnosis is right: our immigration system is dangerously broken. His suggested cure -- interfering with states' rights and a Big Brother ID card -- is dangerously wrong.

Part one of my earmarks series was a basic introduction to earmarks. In part two of my series on earmarks, I want to show how earmarks shortchange New Yorkers, and how earmarks directed to small, red states come out of our pockets.

Last
year, I wrote a
piece that pointed out the general inequity in redistribution of
tax dollars. In 2004, New York was 43rd in the ranking of states
receiving money back from the federal government. For every dollar of
taxes paid in to the Federal Government, New York got 79 cents back.
My piece also presented a couple of examples of deluxe airports in
North Dakota financed in large part by homeland security money. In
2004, North Dakota received $1.73 for every dollar sent to Washington,
more than twice New York's share.

The "dollars back" picture is
for overall federal funding. The picture for earmarks is even more
grim. The chart at right is from the
Many Eyes project. The size of the dots indicate the per-capita
amount of earmark money received by each state in 2005. The big fat
dot is Alaska, which received a stunning $1,012 per person in
earmarks. North Dakota's no Alaska, but its two senators and one
representative managed to wrangle $135 per person. You might need to
get out a magnifying glass to see New York's paltry $29 per person --
we're the little orange dot at the right.

It's no coincidence
that some of the biggest abuses of both earmarks and grants have come
from the smallest states. The href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge">"bridge to
nowhere" in Alaska is the most popular example. The few million
dollars in earmarks obtained by Randy Kuhl are dwarfed by this $223
million bridge. It's also no coincidence the two most senior members
of the Alaska delegation are under
investigation, and one may
have been recorded accepting bribes..

The immense direct
power of earmarking leads to huge temptation to use that power for
personal gain. Even if there's no corruption involved, the
redistribution of tax dollars favors small, rural states. Because of
earmarks, New Yorkers are paying extra taxes to fund silly stuff like
go-nowhere bridges and palatial, untraveled airports.

Neither
candidate in this race has yet raised the fairness issue, but I think
it's worth a look, especially because it cuts across party lines.
Small-government conservatives should be disturbed by the amount of
federal intrusion required to redistribute our funds to rural states.
Anti-corporatist and pro-grassroots progressives should be bothered by
the degree of corporate control exercised via DC lobbyists.

Even though conservatives and progressives should be united on this
issue, it's a tough sell in the current environment. Local and
state governments have come to rely on a steady stream of grants and
earmarks to finance local projects. Congressmen and Senators have
made their ability to deliver pork a cornerstone of their campaigns
and fundraising efforts. Neither local nor national legislators
want to risk a change in a system that they've spent their careers
learning to manipulate.

In the last week, Randy Kuhl has tried to feed the residents of the 29th a bunch of red herring.

The biggest fish on the menu was Kuhl's reaction to the Moveon.org ad. Kuhl's official statement about the MoveOn ad last week wasn't enough. This week, his new blog contains an entry lauding Petraeus as "A True American Hero" and criticizing Democrats who wouldn't attack MoveOn.

While I agree that the MoveOn ad was clumsy and stupid, it's worth noting that Kuhl's site contains twice as much comment on that ad than on Petraeus' statement itself. Kuhl issued one short statement on the President's address last week. As part of his misdirection strategy, Kuhl would have us pay more attention to one ad in the New York Times than an entire war.

The second fish that Kuhl wants us to swallow is that Congress is moving too slow, and not attending to important issues. That's true, of course, as it has been for decades. Kuhl issued another press release that argues that Congress is full of "good ideas gone bad". He singles out S-CHIP, Earmark Reform and Immigration as three good ideas that have been ruined by Congress. He presents nothing really new on S-CHIP, and I've dealt with his anti-S-CHIP talking points on Medicare and taxes and illegal immigration in previous posts. As for Earmark Reform, perhaps it doesn't go far enough, but the simple fact is that we know for the first time who inserted earmarks in specific bills, as the earmark page here shows.

The final stinking old fish that Kuhl is peddling concerns immigration. New York has begun to license illegal immigrants as drivers. Kuhl's reaction is to point out that the 9/11 hijackers had drivers' licenses. However, as Rochesterturning notes, the hijackers were in the country legally. Also, it's a pretty cheap shot for Randy to criticize New York State for simply dealing with a reality: illegal immigrants are going to drive. The twenty-year failure of our federal immigration policy has led New York to this point, and Kuhl knows it.

The Republicans in general, and Kuhl in particular, are desperate to divert attention from the unpopular war in Iraq. Nobody wants to talk about the war 24/7, but Kuhl's attempt to divert is as transparent as it is unpalatable. He needs to stop with the fish and serve up some beef.

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader report (page A3 [pdf], jump [pdf]) from Randy Kuhl's Thursday press conference. Kuhl is frustrated with the pace of legislation in Congress. He thinks the budget might not be done until after October 1, and Congress might not adjourn before Christmas.

Judging how "fast" or "slow" Congress is working is difficult, but let's start with some facts. During the last non-election year (2005), the Republican-led House had voted 485 times by September 21. This year, the House has voted 890 times. In 2005, the House adjourned on December 19.

Here's what then-Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH-8) said in 2006 about adjournment dates:

It means nothing [...] You all know it means nothing because it really does mean nothing. Anyway, there is no reason to have a target adjournment on the schedule.

I searched the morning papers for Randy Kuhl's statement on the Iraq war and found nothing.* Finally, thanks to Rochesterturning, I noticed that Kuhl has issued a statement on his web site. The reason it hasn't been reported is pretty clear: it says nothing new about his position on the war.

Kuhl says that he's waiting for the September 15 formal report to Congress on the 18 mandated benchmarks. Of course, the GAO has already reported that the scorecard is 11 of 18 missed, with 4 of the remaining 7 only "partially accomplished". But this is an important decision, and Kuhl has the right to look at all of the data available before making it.

Kuhl's statement made another interesting claim: "I am in complete support of starting to bring our men and women home this month." I assume that's a reference to Petraeus' testimony that the additional 30,000 troops devoted to the "surge" can be back by next Summer, with the first contingent of 2,200 Marines returning this month (the Washington Post has the details).

The developing mainstream Republican strategy seems to be to sell the return of the 30,000 troops devoted to the surge as the start of a withdrawal. That's used-car-salesman arithmetic. Bringing back the surge troops by next Summer simply returns the troop count in Iraq to January, 2006 levels. Moreover, this withdrawal is one of necessity, not of choice, as this exchange between Petraeus and Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) demonstrates.

To a constituency hungry for change in Iraq, this non-withdrawal withdrawal is pretty thin soup. Kuhl's hesitancy to come out with a solid statement might indicate that he's debating changing his position on the war. Perhaps the report on September 15, which will no doubt recognize the Iraqi government's almost total failure to move forward, will give him some cover to do that.

*Update: Of course, as soon as I make a categorical statement like that, I find a Star-Gazette story on Kuhl's press release.

Update 2: And the Corning Leader.

Every so often, the spin that's used to defend our continued presence in Iraq gets boiled down to an essential, ridiculous nugget of falsehood. It happened today, in the front-page Democrat & Chronicle story on the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. Randy Kuhl says:

I'm confident that General Petraeus is the most competent, qualified, objective individual to determine how this country should proceed in Iraq.

This one sentence is the reductio ad absurdum of all the Petraeus-centric rhetoric we've been hearing for the last six months. Kuhl is putting a general above the President and Congress in making the strategic decision of the next steps in Iraq. Kuhl's flight from responsibility has led him to utter a statement that, taken to its logical conclusion, would have the reader believe that we live in a military dictatorship instead of a republic.

Petraeus, Crocker and the rest can give their report on how they think things are going in Iraq, but Kuhl is living in a fantasy world if he thinks residents of the 29th are going to adopt David Petraeus as their new Caesar. I think yesterday's editorial in the fairly conservative Corning Leader, which states that Petraeus' report is "anti-climactic", is pretty close to the prevailing majority opinion.

After today's non-event of Petraeus' testimony, the Congress, which has the power to declare war according to a quaint little document we like to call the Constitution, will be called upon to make a decision. They may not be "competent, qualified and objective", but they are responsible, whether or not our Member of that august body wants to admit it.

The guilty verdict in the protester trial made the Hornell Evening Tribune, WETM-18 in Elmira, and the Elmira Star-Gazette.

Some of the highlights of the past couple of days of coverage:

• One of the protesters, Ellen Grady, testified that she had been involved in another protest when Amo Houghton had the seat in the 29th. Though she was told that Amo was out and wouldn't come back, he returned at the end of the day and invited the protesters to his home for cookies and lemonade.
• The reason the trial took two days, and jury selection almost one, is that the protesters tried to question each juror about their views on the Iraq war.
• One of the jurors who was interviewed said that the deliberations where surprisingly difficult: "I felt for the defendants and actually wiped tears from my eyes after the verdict. But I feel people should be aware of our laws and should abide by them."
• There's a possibility that those convicted may be sentenced to time in jail. If so, it won't be the first time for at least one protester. Daniel Burns spent time in federal prison for spreading his own blood over a recruiting station in Ithaca in 2003.

Today's Star-Gazette coverage includes a longer article about today's trial of anti-war protesters in Bath. As expected, Kuhl will not be attending the trial, even though he was issued a subpoena on Wednesday. Channel 10 in Syracuse, and Channel 18 in Elmira also carry short pieces on the subpoena.

According to its work schedule [pdf], Congress will adjourn next Tuesday (9/11) at 3 p.m. and remain in recess for the rest of the week due to Rosh Hashana. So Kuhl could, in theory, testify next week if necessary.

In the Star-Gazette story, Kuhl's spokesperson says that the subpoena will be referred to the House's general counsel. According to Rule 8 of the Rules of the House, Kuhl has a duty to inform the Speaker when in receipt of a subpoena that pertains to the "official functions of the House". I don't know if maintaining his district office falls under that heading. If so, according to Rule 8, it is up to the Member to determine if the subpoena is "is a proper exercise of jurisdiction by the court, is material and relevant, and is consistent with the privileges and rights of the House." Assuming that it is, then the member is directed to comply.

One of the major privileges of the house is contained in the Speech or Debate clause of the Constitution, and is also known as "Congressional Immunity". It forbids the arrest of a Member of Congress for crimes other than "Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace" while Congress is in session or while the Member travels to or from Congress. I doubt that this clause will have any bearing on a subpoena from a court in Bath, but any legal action involving a Member of Congress engaged in his official duties opens an interesting can of worms.