Connecting is hard to do. No lie. -- Feb. 26, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert A. McDonald says that when he falsely told a homeless vet on L.A.’s skid row that he too had served in the Special Forces, he was trying to connect.

“What you try to do when you connect with someone is try to find common ground. And with veterans, my common ground is my veteran experience. So what I was trying to do is find a way to connect with that veteran,” McDonald told reporters Tuesday, apologizing for his mistake.

It happened last month when McDonald was taking part in the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. Looking for veterans who needed help, McDonald asked a homeless man if he was a vet. The man said yes, and McDonald asked where he served.

“Special Forces,” the man said.

“Special Forces? What years? I was in Special Forces,” McDonald replied, animatedly.

A CBS News crew with McDonald captured the exchange and broadcast it Jan. 30 as part of a news story on homeless vets. The Huffington Post first reported the discrepancy Monday, and other news organizations naturally joined in, often mentioning the embellished accounts of war experience by NBC’s Brian Williams and Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.

Headlines trumpeted McDonald’s misstatement as a lie. That’s a heavy word, but these days we throw it around lightly. Everybody loves calling out lies and liars. Back in 2003, “Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” by Al Franken, now a U.S. senator from Minnesota, zoomed to the top of bestseller lists.

And yet, to say someone lied is more than a quick way of saying truth was not his constant companion. A lie is a deliberate attempt to deceive. When we say someone lies, we assume moral superiority. You and I misspeak, but They lie.

We need to hold onto the distinction between intentional deceit and a mistake in the moment. We should give the benefit of the doubt to someone who chooses words poorly once in conversation as opposed to someone who repeatedly makes calculated attempts to mislead.

Unfortunately for McDonald, who is trying to rebuild the credibility of the scandal-plagued VA, this was his second widely publicized falsehood this month. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Feb. 15, he claimed that 900 VA employees had been fired since he took office, 60 for manipulating wait times for appointments. In both cases, actual number turned out to be far lower, fact checkers reported.

The Washington Post Fact Checker blog gave McDonald’s firing claims four Pinocchios, its highest rating for “whoppers.”

The VA conceded that McDonald’s numbers were incorrect, but he has not explained how he went on a national TV interview show with faulty statistics, and that’s troubling. Was it bad staff work or something worse?

He was unequivocal, though, about the Special Forces blurt.

“In an attempt to connect with that veteran and to make him feel comfortable, I incorrectly stated that I too had been in Special Forces,” he said. “That was wrong, and I have no excuse.”

A 1975 graduate of West Point, McDonald, according to his official biography, “completed Jungle, Arctic and Desert Warfare training and earned the Ranger tab,” which indicates he completed Army Ranger training. He served in the 82^nd Airborne but not in Army Special Forces. He was chairman, president and CEO of The Procter& Gamble Co. from 2009 to 2013.

 

At a time when many veterans feel isolated and alienated, McDonald should be applauded for trying to break down the government’s wall of bureaucracy. In his first national news conference, he gave out his cell phone number so vets could call him directly.

But he’s right that there’s no excuse for his over-zealous attempt to connect. He has apologized to the White House, members of Congress and veterans.

With two strikes, McDonald insists he will do better to ensure that what he says is accurate. He must deliver on that promise.

Americans can have charity for a stupid mistake or two but they won’t put up with repeated efforts to mislead. No lie.

© 2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Hillary Clinton's new baggage for 2016 -- Feb. 19, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Hillary Clinton will bring baggage to the 2016 campaign that she didn’t have in 2008 and that Bill Clinton couldn’t have imagined in 1992.

It’s the price of success.  The Clinton Foundation is again raising big money from foreign governments for its global charitable programs.

The foundation has received large contributions from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the Canadian agency that is promoting the Keystone XL pipeline, and other foreign entities, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other news organizations reported.

In all, the foundation received nearly $2 billion in donations and pledges from foreign and domestic contributors between its launch in 2001 to the end of 2013, said the Post, which reported that of donors who gave more than $1 million, a third are based outside the United States, and of those who gave more than $5 million, more than half are foreigners.

At least $48 million came from overseas governments, according to the Journal’s tally.  

The donations support global projects tackling environmental, health and economic development problems, and they appear to be perfectly legal. While it is unlawful for foreign nationals to give to U.S. political campaigns, Clinton is not a candidate.

But the contributions raise questions about a possible president’s ties to foreign interests, and Clinton’s foes will make sure no one forgets.

When Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, the foundation suspended fundraising from foreign governments at the Obama administration’s request. It was thought inappropriate for Bill Clinton to be raising money from other countries while his wife was the president’s top adviser on foreign affairs.    

When she left the State Department in 2013 and joined the foundation -- now called the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation – it resumed overseas fundraising.

“Now that she is gearing up to run for president, the same potential exists for foreign governments to curry favor with her as a potential president of the United States,” ethicist Kirk Hanson of Santa Clara University in California, told the Journal, which discovered the donations during a search of the foundation’s online database. 

Hanson and others urged the foundation to reinstate the ban on foreign funds. It should do so immediately to avoid the appearance of conflicts-of-interest.

The Post reported Thursday: “Foreign donors and countries that are likely to have interests before a potential Clinton administration – and yet are ineligible to give to U.S. political campaigns – have affirmed their support for the family’s work through the charitable giving.”

As Republicans pounced, calling for the foundation to return foreign funds, the foundation defended its “strong donor integrity and transparency practices that go above and beyond what is required of U.S. charities and well beyond the practices of most peer organizations.”

The news invites a closer look at Clinton, who’s widely regarded as the Democratic frontrunner if and when she enters the 2016 race. On one hand, the historical appeal of a first woman president remains strong, and Clinton has burnished her credentials as senator and secretary of state. Fans can argue that the family foundation’s fundraising success shouldn’t be held against her.

Many Democrats and even some Republicans remember fondly her husband’s presidency with its booming economy and budget surpluses. (Never mind that messy impeachment business.)

But hold on, Rip Van Winkle.  Hillary is not Bill. Heck, Bill isn’t even Bill. Critics will say the Clintons are as inside as insiders get. Hillary enjoys strong support, personal and financial, but she is s cozy with Wall Street. Her six-figure speaking fees from financial firms raise eyebrows. She is the Democrats’ future?

Yes, for now, anyway. Half of those surveyed this month said Hillary Clinton represents the future, the highest of seven potential presidential candidates. Nearly three in four Democrats and independents who lean Democratic thought so. Both Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Joe Biden were seen as representing the past by nearly two-thirds of people surveyed in the CNN/ORC poll.

This matters because as Bill Clinton, who cast himself as a “New Democrat” in the 1990s, says, Americans are always about the future.

We may be about to see if a Clinton with new baggage can be the future in the 21st Century.

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Help wanted: leadership to save disability safety net -- Feb. 12, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The nation’s safety net for the disabled will be forced to cut benefits by nearly 20 percent next year, unless Congress acts.

So what’s the new Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee doing about the problem? Blaming President Barack Obama.  

And what’s the top Democrat on the committee doing? Blaming Republicans.

Here we go again.

Obama’s “effort to paper over the problem is a classic example of Washington ducking a real American need,” charged Budget chairman Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, as he opened a committee hearing Wednesday on the “coming crisis” in the disability insurance program.

But liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont countered: “Republicans are manufacturing a phony crisis in Social Security in order to cut the earned benefits of millions of the most vulnerable people in this country.”

Sanders, technically an independent, is weighing a presidential bid. He issued a report Tuesday with the provocative title: “Republican Efforts to Cut Social Security Benefits Pit Disabled Americans Against Senior Citizens.”

The disability program’s looming insolvency has been predicted since 1994. In December of next year, the disability trust fund will be depleted, triggering automatic benefit cuts of 19 percent for the nearly 11 million disabled workers and their families who receive disability payments.

“I don’t want to be dramatic,” acting Social Security Administrator Carolyn Colvin told the budget committee, but such a cut for disabled people whose average monthly benefit is $1,200 would be “a death sentence.”

Fireworks aside, helping the disabled is an issue on which Democrats and Republicans have agreed recently and can again, if someone – anyone – will take the risk of forging a bipartisan consensus.  

Last December, the Senate and House passed by wide margins and Obama signed into law the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act, which allows families with a disabled child to save for long-term care through tax-sheltered savings accounts similar to 529 accounts families use to save for college.

Action was far from quick; the ABLE bill was first introduced in 2006. But 85 percent of Congress signed on as cosponsors, even after the conservative Heritage Foundation complained that the bill was “a decisive step in expanding the welfare state.”

To shore up disability’s finances, Obama proposes reallocating a portion of payroll taxes from the retirement trust fund to the disability fund. Lawmakers have approved reallocations from one fund to the other 11 times, most recently in 1994.

But one of the first actions by House Republicans in the new Congress was to pass a rule making reallocation contingent on measures to improve Social Security’s overall solvency. Republicans say reallocation is merely robbing Peter to pay Paul and fails to solve the crisis; Democrats say the new rule is a stealth attack on Social Security.

Sanders says there’s no crisis because the Social Security trust fund has enough to pay all benefits to all recipients for 18 years. He also says it’s time to raise the income cap on the Social Security payroll tax to $250,000, from the current $118,500.  

Obama did not mention Social Security in his State of the Union address, but he has included proposals in his budget to encourage workers with disabilities to stay in the workforce, a goal many Democrats and Republicans support.  

The president proposed testing new strategies, including services to support those with mental impairments and incentives for employers, to help people with disabilities remain at work.

He called for reducing disability benefits to offset state or federal unemployment insurance payments and adding money for continuing disability reviews. These reviews, required every three to seven years, determine whether workers remain disabled. The Social Security Administration says the reviews save $9 for every $1 spent.

Republican Enzi said he was encouraged that “buried deep in the president’s budget are a few programs that might be a grudging acknowledgment” that more can be done to create a disability system that supports work.

But what was missing as Enzi opened the fight over disability was what steps he would take to stabilize the program.Obama’s proposals may be baby steps, but surely Enzi, who has a reputation as a level-headed legislator, could build on them to ensure that those who can return to work do so and those who are unable to work get the help they deserve.

(c) 2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Everything you need to know about vetoes -- Feb. 5, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The vetoes are coming. The House plans to vote next week on a Senate-passed bill approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and that likely will give President Barack Obama his first chance this year to use his veto pen.

After vetoing just two bills in six years, Obama already has threatened to reject at least 10 bills contemplated or under consideration by the Republican-controlled Congress.

That may sound impressive, but Obama is a veto piker compared with Grover Cleveland, the so-called king of vetoes. In his eight years as president, Cleveland wielded his veto authority 584 times.

But Cleveland takes second in total numbers to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his 12 years in the Oval Office, FDR had 635 vetoes – and he had Democratic congresses his entire tenure.

As we haven’t seen any vetoes since 2010, here’s a quick refresher on what Woodrow Wilson (44 vetoes) called a president’s “most formidable prerogative.”

The word veto comes from the Latin “I forbid” and refers to the president’s power to disapprove a bill and prevent its becoming law. The word veto doesn’t appear in the Constitution, but the framers put the power in Article 1, Section 7 as a check on the legislative process.

A president has 10 days, excluding Sundays, to sign a bill passed by Congress for it to become law. With a regular veto, the president returns the bill to the chamber where it originated, usually with an explanation of his objections. Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and the House.

If Congress adjourns during the 10 days, the president can’t return the bill. His decision to withhold his signature is a pocket veto, and Congress does not have the opportunity to override.

Since 1789, when the federal government was founded, 37 of the 44 presidents have used their veto power. In all there have been 2,564 vetoes -- 1,498 regular and 1,066 pocket.

The last president to serve two terms without a single veto? Thomas Jefferson.

Congress has overridden just 4 percent of vetoes, the Congressional Research Service reports, but the hurdle to overcoming a president’s objections has dropped in recent decades. Since John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, Congress has overridden 16 percent of vetoes.  

Democrats controlled both houses of Congress when Obama wielded his veto pen in 2009 and 2010, and neither veto was overridden.

You won’t be surprised that both veto threats and vetoes occur more often when the president and Congress are of different parties. Threats help the president shape legislation because the party in power knows it will need the support of two-thirds of the Congress to make law stick over a president’s disapproval.

“For highly consequential legislation drafted during divided party government, it is hardly an exaggeration to say the president keeps up a veritable drum-beat of veto threats,” Princeton University professor Charles M. Cameron wrote in an essay on “The Presidential Veto” published in 2009.

The vast majority of vetoes are inconsequential in that they have little public policy effect, he says. Congress has attempted to override about 80 percent of consequential vetoes during divided party government, with a success rate of 45 percent, adds Cameron, who is the author of the 2000 book “Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the Politics of Negative Power.” 

Democrat Cleveland had a Democratic Congress for only two of his eight years as president. Of his 346 regular vetoes and 238 pocket vetoes, only seven were overridden. Most of the regular vetoes in his first term disallowed bills to grant veterans benefits to people who didn’t qualify. Even considering their symbolic value, though, “Cleveland’s vetoes…didn’t amount to much,” Cameron writes.

George W. Bush was the first president since John Quincy Adams to serve a full term without a veto, but that was in the post-9/11 era when Congress was more deferential. Bush issued 12 vetoes in his second term – 11 when Democrats controlled the Senate and House – and four were overridden.

Dwight Eisenhower used the veto to force compromise with Democratic activists, and Bill Clinton forced House Republicans led by Newt Gingrich to moderate, says Cameron.   

So as the vetoes come once again, we’ll see if Obama can use his leverage to force this Republican Congress to moderate its demands.  

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Taking a whack at the tax reform pinata -- Jan. 29, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Tax reform is like the old song about heaven. Everybody wants to go there, but nobody wants to die.

Nearly everybody -- President Barack Obama, politicians, most taxpayers -- says we need a simpler, fairer tax code, but nobody wants to give up anything to get there.

   

The uproar over Obama’s proposal to tax 529 plans is a case in point. You can imagine how the big brains in the White House figured that 529s were ripe for picking. Less than 3 percent of families use 529 and similar tax-free savings plans for college, and the plans disproportionately benefit the well off.

Households at all income levels may make after-tax contributions, earnings are tax-deferred and funds may be used tax free for qualified education expenses. About 70 percent of account balances are held by households with incomes over $200,000.

As part of his “middle class economics” plan, Obama suggested taxing 529s and using the revenues to expand an education tax credit for couples making up to $180,000 a year.

Cue the outrage. House Speaker John Boehner charged Obama’s proposal would hurt the very people the president claimed he wanted to help: the middle class. Congressional Democrats also took a whack at Obama’s 529 pinata.

The Obama family’s own hefty 529 accounts would have been unscathed as the proposal only would have taxed future contributions to plans. Back in 2007, the then-senator and Michelle Obama socked away $240,000 in 529 plans for their daughters’ education.

About half the households with 529 and similar college savings plans had incomes above $150,000, according to a Government Accountability Office study in 2012. But that means about half had income below that amount.

The GAO began its report with a disturbing fact: “While median family income decreased between 2005 and 2011, college tuition and fees increased at an average annual rate of 6 percent, more than double the rate of inflation.”

However promising taxing 529s looked on paper, it should not have come as a surprise to anyone in the White House that families that could afford to save used the plans and would hate to lose them.

In federal budget terms, taxing the capital gains of future contributions wasn’t a big ticket item. It would have resulted in revenues of $1 billion over 10 years -- but the proposal hit millions of families. There are about 12 million accounts nationwide.

Thus, Obama managed to accomplish something rare in Washington: His proposal united Democrats and Republicans – against him. The White House said the proposal had become “a distraction” and dropped it within a week.

A peevish editorial in The Wall Street Journal lamented that Obama had moved so quickly. “This is a cut-their-losses move, but we wish the idea had rotted in the sun for a few more months. It would have been instructive to the same middle-class taxpayers Mr. Obama claims to serve,” the paper opined. Pass the sour grapes – or raisins.  

Income inequality, long a Democratic issue, has become a new political cause for Republicans. As they weigh 2016 presidential bids, former governors Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush as well as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker talk of ending poverty.   

Another problem is the shrinking middle class. About as many Americans identified themselves as lower or lower-middle class as middle class in a Pew Research Center/USA Today survey last year.  The share of Americans who said they were middle class dropped from 53 percent in 2008 to 44 percent last year.

The median household income was about $52,000 in 2013, the latest year for which the Census has figures. That’s 4.6 percent lower than it was in 2008 and 8.7 percent below 1999’s median household income of $56,895.

For the time being, savings in state-run 529 accounts appear safe from tax reform efforts.

Families will continue to use the plans tax-free for tuition, books, fees and other qualified expenses at any college or university in the country. 

One necessity that doesn’t qualify is computers. A bipartisan bill in the House would allow computer purchases with 529 funds, and Boehner has urged Obama to support it.

But that helps illustrate the problem with tax reform. It’s always easier to give -- or expand -- a tax break than to take one away.

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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The politics of high school civics -- Jan. 22, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Everybody loves seeing how dumb other people are, so this Tweet naturally rocketed around the Twitterverse:  

“The NFL been around longer than our government. We’ve had 48 Super Bowls and only 44 presidents. I didn’t know that.”

It would be funny except that, as somebody commented on Facebook, “Her vote counts the same as yours.”  

Too often our fellow Americans display breathtaking ignorance about U.S. history or government. In a nationwide survey last year, only 36 percent of adults could name all three branches of government, the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania reported. Worse, 35 percent could not name even one branch.

Most adults also didn’t know which party controlled the U.S. House or Senate, the survey found.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress has been reporting for years that only a few students know civics. Among 4^th graders, only 27 percent tested at or above the proficient level in civics, according to the 2010 assessment, the most recent. Only 22 percent of 8^th graders and 24 percent of 12^th graders tested as proficient.

The poor performance shouldn’t come as a surprise. Many schools have dropped civics as a separate class, combining it with American history. The good news is we’re seeing a proliferation of efforts to reinvigorate civic education. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has devoted her retirement to the cause, and many nonprofits have sprung up to tackle the problem.

Last September, 26 nonpartisan groups – including the Annenberg center, Library of Congress, National Archives and Mount Vernon -- launched the Civics Renewal Network. The online resource offers high-quality, no-cost instructional materials for various grades.

Some states, though, are pinning their hopes on a dubious method to foster greater civic knowledge: the U.S. citizenship test.

Arizona just became the first state to require that students pass the citizenship test before graduating from high school. The naturalization test is an oral exam in which a candidate for citizenship is asked up to 10 questions from a list of 100 and must answer six correctly in the interview. 

Members of the Class of 2017 in Arizona will need to get 60 of 100 questions correct. Similar measures are moving through the legislatures in North Dakota, Utah and Missouri.

A few other states require some type of history or civics test for high school graduation. The U.S. citizenship test is the focus of the Civics Education Initiative, a project of the Joe Foss Institute, a nonprofit based in Scottsdale, Ariz., whose motto is “Patriotism Matters.”

The institute’s goal is to have every state pass a law requiring the citizenship exam for high school graduation by Sept. 17, 2017, the 230^th anniversary of signing of the Constitution. It says about 15 other states are currently considering the idea.

For legislators, adopting the citizenship test is a bipartisan way to appear to be educating students while sidestepping the political controversies that often surround civics education.   

“Every classroom discussion, textbook adoption, or comment by a teacher has become a potential flashpoint,” Peter Levine and Scott Wagner wrote in a Jan. 15 op-ed in The Hill newspaper. “Even the word `democracy’ is politically divisive in a way that was not true in the 1980s,” they wrote.

Levine is director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, which formed the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge.

The commission concluded in a major study in 2013, “We find that testing civics has no positive impact, but that could be because the tests are not well designed, teachers are not well prepared and supported to teach the material, or the curriculum is misaligned with the tests.”

The commission recommended that new tests be designed that are aligned with curriculum, so that students gain the knowledge and skills necessary for active citizenship. 

Before jumping on the citizenship test bandwagon, states should consider a broader approach to civics, one that stresses understanding over rote learning.

Otherwise, we may simply churn out more graduates who have passed a test but remain dumb. Remember, their votes count the same as yours.   

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Backstory on SOTU: TJ wouldn't approve -- Jan. 15, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama will ride in his limo to the Capitol where, bathed in TV light, he will deliver his State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress. 

Ho hum, you may say with 21^st century ennui. Big deal. We don’t think twice about presidents appearing before Congress.

But nobody was blasé in April 1913 when President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress in person. It was shocking.

Presidents in those days didn’t deliver speeches to Congress. They followed the model of Thomas Jefferson and sent carefully written reports.  

The Constitution requires that a president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” It’s silent on how the information should be delivered.

Presidents George Washington and John Adams gave annual messages to Congress in person, but Jefferson ceased the practice. He found the pomp and ceremony too reminiscent of the English monarch’s “speech from the throne” to Parliament. The first two presidents had appeared with quite the entourage -- their entire Cabinets and all their secretaries.

Jefferson apparently wasn’t a polished public speaker and the Capitol wasn’t yet finished, so he was happy to give the speech a pass. So were his successors.   

Wilson, the Virginia-born former president of Princeton University and former governor of New Jersey, was a gifted orator at ease before crowds. He said when he broke with the tradition: 

“I think that (a personal appearance) is the only dignified way for the president to address Congress at the opening of a session, instead of sending the address to be read perfunctorily in the clerk’s familiar tone of voice. It is a precedent which, it is true, has been discontinued a long time, but which is a very respectable precedent.”

Wilson gave a brief speech and made the trip simply, driving to the Capitol with one Secret Service man. His male secretary followed in his own car, The New York Times reported. Democrat Wilson was fortunate to have Democrats in control of both houses of Congress.

After appearing in person before Congress a few weeks after his inauguration, Wilson went back to Congress in June and August of 1913. He started weekly press conferences. That December, he gave his first annual message to Congress – what we now call the State of the Union Address.  

Subsequent presidents went back and forth between written and oral State of the Union messages and some delivered both. Since Reagan, presidents have delivered speeches. The first official televised response by members of the opposing party came in 1966. In 2010, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell gave the official Republican response.

   

This will be Obama’s sixth State of the Union Address, and he’s a lame duck. His legislative wish list will be dismissed as mostly fantasy – if people watch at all.

Viewership of Obama’s State of the Union speech last year dropped to its lowest level since his first address. In 2009, about 52.4 million people tuned in to see Obama. Last year, just 33.3 million watched. That was also the lowest viewership for the State of the Union since Nielsen began keeping track in 1993. That year, Bill Clinton’s first, 66.9 million people watched.

Presidents often hit the road to sell their proposals after the State of the Union address. Obama has tried to build interest in his speech by previewing his proposals. He quipped that with only two years left in his term, he couldn’t wait for the speech to roll out his ideas.

Traveling around the country, he announced an array of proposals aimed at improving the lives of middle-class Americans. These include making community colleges free, stepping up cybersecurity measures, expanding broadband service, protecting the environment and allowing workers paid family and sick leave.

The catch is that many of Obama’s proposals require the approval of Congress. That will be no mean feat -- even after the president stands before a joint session and makes his pitch in person.  

© 2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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