Gina Haspel's secrets need sunlight -- May 10, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

As Gina Haspel tells it, her life was “right out of a spy novel.”

Haspel, President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, joined the agency in 1985 and worked undercover for more than 30 years.  

“From my first days in training, I had a knack for the nuts and bolts of my profession,” she told senators Wednesday at her confirmation hearing. “I excelled in finding and acquiring secret information that I obtained in brush passes, dead drops or in meetings in dusty alleys of third world capitals.

“I recall very well my first meeting with a foreign agent. It was on a dark, moonless night with an agent I had never met. When I picked him up, he passed me the intelligence and I passed him an extra $500 for the men he led. It was the beginning of an adventure I had only dreamed of.”

It sounds like fiction all right, and that’s the way Haspel, 61, wants it.

There’s much the public doesn’t know about her career because the records are classified, and Haspel herself, as acting CIA director, decides how much – or, in this case, how little -- to declassify.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have read the classified material about Haspel but can’t divulge what they’ve read, are frustrated.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, said Haspel has the knowledge and experience for the job, but “many people – and I include myself in that number – have questions about the message the Senate would be sending by confirming someone for this position who served as a supervisor in the counterterrorism center during the time of the rendition, detention and interrogation program.”

Haspel would be the first woman CIA director, and she has bipartisan support from former CIA directors. 

But  more than 90 former U.S. ambassadors and diplomats and more than 100 retired generals and admirals have signed letters, raising concerns about her nomination and the extent of her role in “enhanced” interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, as well as destroying evidence of the activities many call torture.

Most Senate Republicans support Haspel but Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who suffered torture for five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, issued a statement Wednesday night urging the Senate to reject Haspel.

“I believe Gina Haspel is a patriot who loves our country and has devoted her professional life to its service and defense,” McCain said. “However, Ms. Haspel’s role in overseeing the use of torture by Americans is disturbing. Her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying.”

In 2002, Haspel ran a CIA “black site” detention facility in Thailand where at least one suspected terrorist was waterboarded repeatedly.

In 2005, as Congress was about to launch an investigation, she advocated destroying more than 90 videotapes of the suspect’s interrogations. At the request of her boss, she drafted a cable ordering the destruction. He sent the cable himself.

Haspel proved a wily witness at her confirmation hearing. Often evasive, she repeatedly said she has a strong moral compass. She dodged questions about her role at the detention center but insisted the techniques were legal and approved by President George W. Bush.

She said she would not restart the “enhanced” interrogation program, even if Trump, who said during the campaign he might bring back waterboarding, ordered her to do so.

“We’re not getting back into that business,” she said.

The committee is expected to vote next week, with a full Senate vote in a few weeks. It appears Haspel may squeak through.

Republicans hold a 51 to 49 Senate majority, but McCain is battling brain cancer in Arizona. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has said he will vote no. But Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will vote for confirmation, and a couple of other Democrats also facing tough re-election bids may do the same.

Haspel portrayed herself as “a typical middle-class American,” although one with no social media accounts.

It’s time she put more on the table than her spy novel stories. Haspel needs to declassify records of her career, so everyone can judge whether she’s fit for the job.   

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Don't let town halls be another casualty of shootings -- June 15, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Washington was badly shaken Wednesday by what appeared to be the politically motivated shootings of Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, a top congressional leader, and three others at a baseball field in Alexandria.

The shooter, whose name I will not use because such sickos crave fame, died after a gunfight with police. We may never know his motivation, but he had posted anti-Republican screeds on social media.

In the aftermath of the attack, many politicians curbed their instinct for the jugular and urged an end to harsh partisan rhetoric. 

“We may have our differences, but we do well to remember that everyone who serves in our nation's capital is here because they love our country," President Donald Trump said.

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said an emotional House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she prays for all members of Congress, regardless of party. 

“There’s too much, I believe, raw discourse that’s pulling people apart,” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said.

It would be nice to think we’re seeing the Thaw of 2017, a melting of the polar ice caps on which Democrats and Republicans sit in frosty isolation, but don’t count on it.

Even though some lawmakers may genuinely want to put aside fierce partisanship, neither party seems willing to risk constituent outrage – and primary challenges -- if it compromises on health care and the budget, to say nothing of stricter gun laws.    

Unfortunately, the most likely result of the gunman’s rampage may be an even more locked-down and remote Congress.

House members already are invoking security as a reason to avoid town hall meetings and other uncomfortable encounters with constituents.

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Virginia, said members may have to “recalibrate” and rethink events like town halls.

“It’s a wake-up call,” Brat told Roll Call, a newspaper on Capitol Hill. “We should not be doing this.”

Brat was heckled and booed at a town hall in his district in February when he defended Trump’s policies.  

Also in February, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, cited the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, in explaining why he won’t hold in-person town halls.

“Threats are nothing new to me, and I have gotten my share as a felony judge,” Gohmert wrote in a letter to constituents.

“However, the House Sergeant at Arms advised us after former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot at a public appearance, that civilian attendees at Congressional public events stand the most chance of being harmed or killed – just as happened there,” he wrote.

Giffords was setting up a “Congress on your Corner” event in Tucson in January 2011 when a lone gunman shot her in the head, killed six people and injured 13 others.

Increased congressional security surely is needed in some settings. Of the 22 members of Congress at the ballfield, Scalise alone had a security detail, assigned because he is the third-ranking Republican in the House.

While Capitol Police protect all members of Congress when they’re in the Capitol complex, they provide 24-hour security only to the House and Senate leadership.

“By him (Scalise) being there, he probably saved everybody else’s life, because if you don’t have a leadership person there, there would have been no security there,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, told MSNBC. 

In this era of fiscal belt-tightening, having taxpayers pay for stepped-up security for hundreds of House members and senators outside the Capitol is problematic. 

Lawmakers are exploring other options, such as allowing members to use campaign funds for security outside Washington and of moving district offices to more secure locations.

As we move forward, we would be wise to listen to Giffords, who knows better than anyone the risks of openness. Responding to Gohmert, she wrote in a statement:

“I was shot on a Saturday morning. By Monday morning, my offices were open to the public. Ron Barber -- at my side that Saturday, who was shot multiple times, then elected to Congress in my stead — held town halls. It’s what the people deserve in a representative.

“To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage,” she wrote. “Face your constituents. Hold town halls.”

(C)2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Ka-ching! National parks get only Trump change -- for now -- April 6, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

You’d have thought the National Park Service won the lottery.

The photos of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke holding an oversized check with Tyrone Brandyburg, superintendent of Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, looked like shots of a lucky lottery winner with a gazillion-dollar bonanza.   

But this check to the National Park Service was chump change – or Trump change -- $78,333.32.

That’s how much salary taxpayers have paid Trump since noon Jan. 20. To compare: Taxpayers have shelled out an estimated $10 million on Trump’s visits to Mar-a-Lago.

Candidate Trump vowed he wouldn’t accept a salary as president, but the Constitution requires a president to be paid. The framers thought compensation would keep the president independent and free of corruption.

Until now, only Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy gave their presidential salaries to charity.

Trump initially planned to make a splash by giving away his entire $400,000 salary at year’s end. But the White House changed course and staged the photo op Monday in the press briefing room.

Trump gave the first installment of his salary to the park service, nearly everybody’s favorite federal agency. The money will go towards repairing infrastructure, Zinke said. 

But the sum will hardly make a dent in the $229 million backlog in deferred maintenance on the 25 national battlefields. Overall, the park service has a backlog of $12 billion in deferred maintenance on more than 400 parks and historic sites around the country.

Trump’s budget proposes a cut of $1.5 billion, or 12 percent, from the Interior Department’s budget. It doesn’t specify how much will be cut from the park service.

So, Trump came across not as a generous benefactor to the park service but as a latter-day John D. Rockefeller, handing it a few shiny dimes.

Visits to national parks have been growing over the past decade to a record high of 330 million visits last year during the service’s centennial celebration.

Most park facilities were built in the early and mid-20^th century and need updating or replacing. These include rest areas and visitor centers, wastewater treatment and electricity plants, staff quarters and campgrounds.

Congress has long preferred to create new parks rather than take care of existing ones, but addressing deferred maintenance may be a rare area of bipartisan cooperation in the fractured Congress.

Last year, Congress authorized an additional $90 million for non-transportation maintenance and an additional $28 million for roads and bridges in the parks, with funds rising every year for five years.  

That’s not nearly enough to tackle the enormous backlog, park service officials and fans say.

Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, introduced on March 28 the National Park Service Legacy Act, which would direct $50 million annually in 2018, 2019 and 2020 for deferred maintenance at the parks.

The Legacy Act would authorize increasingly larger sums until $500 million would be available annually from 2027 through 2047. Costs would be paid through revenues from government oil and natural gas royalties.

“Virginia ranks fifth in the list of states with the greatest need for maintenance, with a backlog of $800 million,” said Warner. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia is a cosponsor.

Republican co-sponsors include Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who wants to help the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which has a $232 million maintenance backlog.

“The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of America’s greatest treasures and it has a tremendous economic impact on East Tennessee,” Alexander said.

The park service does have its critics.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee on federal spending and oversight, has called out park service projects in Pennsylvania and Alaska as wasteful.

While congressional action is slow, there is something you can do: make a gift directly to the National Park Service, or, if you prefer, to your favorite national park. 

Shenandoah National Park has a $90 million maintenance backlog, for example, and Gulf Islands National Seashore has a $21 million maintenance backlog.

Your gift, like Trump’s, comes with a bonus. It’s tax deductible, if you’re among the 30 percent of taxpayers who itemize.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Capital in confusion over Obamacare RX -- Feb. 16, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump turned to House Speaker Paul Ryan the other day and said: “He’s working on Obamacare. It’s going to be very soon -- right?”

“Yes,” Ryan replied, as cameras rolled in the Oval Office.

More than a nudge from the president, Ryan could use some Lyndon Johnson-style arm twisting to make good on the Republicans’ long-term promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.   

Trump has left details of reforming health insurance to Ryan and other Republicans in Congress, but they are floundering in a sea of options.  

Trump still sounds like he’s an outsider on the campaign trail. When Humana became the latest major insurer to say it will stop selling coverage on Obamacare exchanges in 2018, Trump tweeted: “Obamacare continues to fail. Will repeal, replace and save health care for ALL Americans.”

Yet he has presented no plan of his own and the goal of replacement seems to be slipping farther into the future.

As a House member, Tom Price, the new Health and Human Services secretary, offered a plan, one of many. None of the other plans has galvanized widespread support even within the GOP, let alone with Democrats. It’s unclear what Senate Republicans will accept.  

Ryan went door-to-door, trying to build a consensus around his “Better Way” plan, but Republicans even disagree on timing -- repeal and replace at the same time or repeal first and take time on a replacement.

Trump has said repeal and replace will be “essentially simultaneous.”

But Ryan told reporters this week that reform “affects every person and every family in America,” and a deliberate, “step-by-step approach” is needed for stability.

House Republicans received plan options at a party caucus before they headed home for the week-long Presidents Day break.

Meanwhile, the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 35 to 40 of the most conservative Republicans, wants to repeal the law now and is backing a plan by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Paul’s plan would undo most of the Obamacare rules, rely on expanded health savings accounts, allow people to buy insurance across state lines and join associations to increase purchasing power.  

Paul would also jettison the Medicaid expansion that was a state option under the Affordable Care Act. That’s a sticking point. It’s always easier to give people a benefit than take one away.

Before he left office, President Barack Obama urged Democrats not to “rescue” Republicans in their efforts to replace Obamacare. House Republicans voted scores of times to repeal Obamacare since the law was enacted in 2010 without a single Republican vote.

Despite the years of controversy over Obama’s signature law, it appears many Americans remain surprisingly uninformed. More than one in three either thought the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare are different programs or didn’t know whether they are the same or different, a poll by Morning Consult reported last month.

The Trump administration is taking actions that actually could make the law more palatable to critics. 

The Internal Revenue Service is relaxing a key enforcement mechanism scheduled to take effect this year. The IRS was to withhold tax refunds from people who failed to comply with the mandate to purchase health insurance or pay a tax penalty. Instead, IRS will process returns and refunds as usual.

In addition, HHS just proposed new rules aimed at stabilizing the exchanges to encourage insurers to keep offering coverage and customers more plan choices.     

Obama promised Americans if they liked their doctors or their health insurance plans, they could keep them. The claim turned out to be false and was a source of anger that motivated many voters.

Trump promised to get rid of Obamacare and put something better in its place while retaining the law’s popular provisions. 

People hate paying higher insurance premiums – which they blame on Obamacare even though premiums were rising before the law. But they like keeping children under 26 on their insurance plans and not being denied, or priced out of, coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions.

It’s a curious turn that, for the time being anyway, Republican dithering on Capitol Hill means Trump is keeping Obamacare alive.  

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Giving the president the hook -- July 30, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Good news: Barack Obama will not subvert the Constitution and grab a third presidential term.  

Most Americans never imagined that he’d do such a thing, but oddball doomsayers have warned for years that Obama was angling for a presidency for life.   

“I actually think I’m a pretty good president. I think if I ran, I could win. But I can’t,” Obama said Tuesday in Ethiopia. “The law is the law.”

He was giving the hook to African leaders who sometimes govern for decades. In this country, though, his comments set off a Seinfeldian debate about nothing. Could he win a third term if he could run, which he can’t?

His comments about age and presidential term limits, though, are worth examining.

“I’m still a pretty young man, but I know that somebody with new energy and new insights will be good for my country,” said Obama, who will turn 54 Tuesday.

“In our world, old thinking can be a stubborn thing. That’s one of the reasons why we need term limits -- old people think old ways,” he said.

If Obama believes this country needs someone younger than he next time around, what does that say about the Democrats’ elderly team of rivals? Grandma Hillary, 67, the presumptive frontrunner, may have a golden resume but Clinton is hard to sell as a candidate of new energy and new insights.

Throngs of Democrats flock to hear Bernie Sanders, who has vinegar, but he is 73. Joe Biden’s humanity makes him the Democrats’ favorite potential presidential candidate who’s not in the race. He’s 72. It may take a Hillary implosion to bring him into the fray.  

Among Republican hopefuls, several are younger than Obama – and all can claim new energy and insight. Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz are 44, Scott Walker is 47, and Rand Paul is 52. But it’s an irrepressible old guy with no elective experience who’s leading the pack.

Donald Trump, 69, said he wished Obama could run again so Trump could beat him and everyone else. Trump has energy and unusual insights, all right, but he scares most Republicans. Also in their 60s: Jeb Bush, 62, Lindsey Graham, 60, John Kasich, 63, and Rick Perry, 65.

Setting aside the current competition, it’s worth asking: Do we need presidential term limits or should voters decide how long to keep a president?

"If they want to vote for someone, we shouldn’t have a rule that tells them they can’t.”

That’s not a wistful Bill Clinton. That’s conservative superhero President Ronald Reagan who said in 1987 that he hoped to “start a movement” after he left the White House to repeal the two-term limit on the presidency.  The change would not apply to him, Reagan said, but to his successors.

Since the 22^nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, people have been arguing about the wisdom of prohibiting someone from being elected to the presidency more than twice or serving more than 10 years. A vice president who serves more than two years of a previous president’s term and a full term may not run for re-election.  

For example, more than two years remained in Richard Nixon’s term when he resigned and Vice President Gerald Ford took over. Had Ford beat Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ford could have served only one full term and could not have run for re-election.

The Founders saw the presidency as a short-term gig. Delegates to the 1797 Constitutional Convention debated a six- or seven-year term and then agreed on four years. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson set the precedent of two terms, and the tradition stuck until the 1940s.

Only after Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won a fourth term did the rules change. Bills proposing a constitutional amendment to repeal the 22^nd Amendment have died in Congress over and over.  

As they should. The Founders who feared a restoration of the monarchy had the right idea. No one person should dominate our highest office indefinitely. We should keep the two-term limit. Even Obama is fine with it.     

“You can see my gray hair – I’m getting old,” he said.         

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Readers advise GOP: Change now -- July 18, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Last month, I asked readers how the GOP could freshen its appeal to young voters and avoid another presidential election drubbing. Today we’ll hear their advice.

  

“Change. Develop and implement policies that benefit young voters. Reduce student loan costs and or the need for student loans,” wrote David Browning of North Chesterfield, Va., in a letter to the editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Browning had other good ideas but let’s stop at student loans. Congress has been stymied trying to roll back interest rate hikes on new Stafford student loans, which doubled this month to 6.8 percent. This week, there were signs of progress. Senators of both parties agreed Wednesday on a deal to lower rates temporarily, and the White House indicated President Obama would go along. Look for action before the August recess.

   

A reader named Robert who described himself as an “old time, left out Republican” emailed me to say that Republicans have “forgotten their roots: Lincoln. Roosevelt. Eisenhower, and the good side of Nixon…the Republicans need to be born again.”

He advised:  “Tune out the radio talking heads and turn off Fox TV. Young voters are interested in jobs, education and the environment. They believe in science. They have gone to school with other races and with immigrants. They know gays and lesbians…Young people cannot relate to the racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant attitude of many of the GOP leaders.”

There’s a lot to think about in that one paragraph, but immigration tops the list for a successful Republican future.

The Republican National Committee’s “Growth and Opportunity Project” report released earlier this year said Republicans must “embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform” if they’re to have any hope of attracting minority voters. Young voters also overwhelmingly favor changes in immigration policy.

Among 18- to 29-year-old voters, 68 percent say illegal immigrants should be given a chance for legal status and only 28 percent favor deportation, the Pew Research Center reported after analyzing exit polls from the 2012 election.

Voters under 30 are the most ethnically and racially diverse of any age group, says Pew. The share of  young voters who are white has declined 16 percent since 2000. Back then, 74 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 identified themselves as white. By 2012, whites were 58 percent of the voters under 30. 

Eighteen percent of voters under 30 said they were Hispanic, 17 percent African American and 7 percent mixed race.

   

So, while some analysts say the GOP hasn’t tapped out on white voters and could still win elections by attracting more whites, a single-race strategy is more than a bad idea. It’s also likely a short-term one.   

Ethnic diversity is as American as tacos, but House Republicans have stalled efforts to pass immigration reform -- comprehensive or piecemeal. Supporters of reform are talking about a major push to sway House members during the August recess, Aug. 5 to Sept. 9. If they’re successful, watch for votes in September.    

What besides a change in policy might Republicans do to attract young voters? A reader named Mary proposed a marketing campaign to rebrand the party: train candidates in the art of public speaking and language, divide the “market” into special interest groups and appeal to each group with buzz words, and build relationships with public figures.

That sounds promising, except that the rising young stars in the GOP – Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, 43; Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, both 42, and Rand Paul, 50 – appeal to right-wing believers, not to a new target audience.   

Freshman Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., 36, has wowed conservatives by condemning a path to citizenship and any compromise on immigration. Cotton has “the poise of Bill Clinton but the politics of Rush Limbaugh,” Robert Costa wrote in National Review Online.

Democrats like to say the new breed of Republicans has young faces and old ideas. The GOP may need to be born again politically but change will be a tough sell to the Republican base, especially if change smells like retreat. Here’s one more reader’s advice:  

Republicans should simply “cite facts, logic and history” to young voters, the man wrote, adding, “And for God’s sake don’t apologize – for ANYTHING!”

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.