ABC, NBC Minimize Senate Democrats Dropping Nuclear Option, Tout "Bold Move"

ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today on Friday did their best to downplay Senate Democrats’ Thursday move to curtail the Republican Party’s filibuster power. The two newscasts devoted a combined 39 seconds to the controversial vote, which ABC’s Dan Harris labeled a “bold move“. GMA apparently thought the potential marriage of serial killer Charles Manson was more important, as it devoted over two minutes of air time to that eyebrow-raising story. of

By contrast, Friday’s CBS This Morning spent nearly three minutes on the “historic change in the Senate“, as Norah O’Donnell put it. O’Donnell also wondered, “Will Democrats regret invoking the nuclear option?“

Harris used his “bold move” term during a 23-second news brief on Good Morning America. The ABC news anchor also used the same “historic change” phrase that O’Donnell did:

DAN HARRIS: We’re going to talk about a historic change in Washington, which this morning is only intensifying the partisan bickering. In a bold move, Senate Democrats have changed long-standing filibuster rules, saying it is necessary to overcome legislative gridlock. From now on, only a simple majority vote will be needed to confirm most presidential nominees. Republicans called the move, which President Obama himself once opposed, a naked power grab.

Four minutes later, NBC’s Natalie Morales gave her very general 16-second news brief on Today about the Senate vote:

NATALIE MORALES: Some people say lawmakers are all talk, but that could change, as the Senate voted Thursday to weaken the power of the filibuster. The 52 to 48 vote is a win for Democrats. The vote makes it harder for Republicans to block confirmation of the President’s nominees for judges and other top posts.

On CBS This Morning, correspondent Nancy Cordes did something that Harris didn’t: play a clip of then-Senator Obama voicing his opposition to the “nuclear option” during a 2005 press conference:

NORAH O’DONNELL: The filibuster has played a huge role in the history of the Senate. This morning, that power of open-ended debate has been dramatically cut back.

CHARLIE ROSE: Senate Democrats voted yesterday to change the rule that allowed Republicans to block presidential appointments. Senators will only be allowed to filibuster Supreme Court nominations.

Nancy Cordes is on Capitol Hill. Nancy, good morning.

NANCY CORDES: Charlie and Norah, good morning to you. The rule they changed has been around for 96 years. Democrats say Republicans were abusing it, and they had no choice. But Republicans call this a power grab, and say that Democrats robbed the minority of one of its true few pieces of leverage.

[CBS News Graphic: "The Nuclear Option: Senate Dems In Dramatic Move To Curb Filbusters"]

CORDES (voice-over): All but three Democrats voted to clip the minority’s power, lowering the hurdle for curbing presidential appointees from 60 votes to a simple majority of 51 votes. That means Republicans can no longer block nominees if they don’t like them, or to extract unrelated concessions.

SEN. HARRY REID, (D), MAJORITY LEADER (from press conference): What has gone on is absolutely unfair and wrong, and I’m glad we changed it.

CORDES: Half of all the filibusters against presidential nominations in U.S. history have involved Mr. Obama’s nominees. Seventy-six presidential nominees are awaiting confirmation, for an average of 147 days. Republicans recently blocked three of the President’s nominees to the powerful U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in D.C. But Republicans say Democrats are only taking this step now because they’re trying to divert attention from ObamaCare’s problems.

[CBS News Graphic: "U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Washington DC; Blocked; Patricia Millett; Cornelia Pillard; Robert Wilkins"]

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R), KENTUCKY (on-camera, from speech on Senate floor): To my friends on the other side of the aisle, you’ll regret this, and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.
                           
CORDES: That’s the same argument then-Senator Barack Obama made in 2005, when Republicans were in charge and considering the same move.

BARACK OBAMA (from May 2005 press conference): I think the loss will be enormous, and one that all parties involved will come to regret.

CORDES: On Thursday, he said times have changed.

OBAMA (from White House press conference): Today’s pattern of obstruction – it just isn’t normal. It’s not what our founders envisioned.

CORDES: Republican Senator John McCain led a bipartisan effort to head off the nuclear option in July. He was not successful this time.

CORDES (on-camera): Do you think the Senate can ever go back from this?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R), ARIZONA: I would be surprised because if we got the majority in 2015, I think there would be people who would be – not want to reverse it.

CORDES (live): Democrats argue this move is going to ease gridlock because they’ll be able to get these nominees through much quicker, while Republicans say it’s only going to increase mistrust on all the other issues. Either way, Charlie and Norah, nobody is getting confirmed over the next two weeks, because the Senate has just gone on a long recess.

ROSE: Thanks, Nancy.

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ABC, NBC Minimize Senate Democrats Dropping Nuclear Option, Tout "Bold Move"

Obama to tout economy while marking Lehman fall

In this image from video pretaped at the White House in Washington Friday, Sept. 13, 2013, for Sunday morning’s ABC’s “This Week” President Barack Obama answers questions about Syria, and other pressing national and international issues during an interview with George Stephanopoulos. Trying to lay claim to an economic turnaround, Obama acknowledged that despite progress, middle and low-income Americans have not benefited as much as the top 1 percent in the country. “We came in, stabilized the situation,” citing 42 months in a row of growth, 7 1/2 million jobs created and a revitalized auto industry. He said that when it comes to a crucial deadline to raise the nation’s borrowing limit next month, he would not negotiate with Republicans. (AP Photo/ABC News)

In this image from video pretaped at the White House in Washington Friday, Sept. 13, 2013, for Sunday morning’s ABC’s “This Week” President Barack Obama answers questions about Syria, and other pressing national and international issues during an interview with George Stephanopoulos. Trying to lay claim to an economic turnaround, Obama acknowledged that despite progress, middle and low-income Americans have not benefited as much as the top 1 percent in the country. “We came in, stabilized the situation,” citing 42 months in a row of growth, 7 1/2 million jobs created and a revitalized auto industry. He said that when it comes to a crucial deadline to raise the nation’s borrowing limit next month, he would not negotiate with Republicans. (AP Photo/ABC News)

FILE – In this Sept. 15, 2008 file photo, Lehman Brothers world headquarters is shown in New York, the day the 158-year-old investment bank, choked by the credit crisis and falling real estate values, filed for bankruptcy. After weeks of intense focus on the crisis in Syria, the White House is set to use the five-year anniversary of the Lehman Bros. collapse next week to lay claim to an economic turnaround and to press congressional Republicans to not use the threat of a shutdown or a unprecedented debt default to extract a delay of President Barack Obama’s signature health care. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, file)

FILE – In the Sept. 14, 2009, file photo President Barack Obama speaks about the financial crisis on the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers at Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York. After weeks of intense focus on the crisis in Syria, the White House is set to use the five-year anniversary of the Lehman Bros. Sept. 15, 2008, bankruptcy filing next week to lay claim to an economic turnaround and to press congressional Republicans to not use the threat of a shutdown or a unprecedented debt default to extract a delay of President Barack Obama’s signature health care. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

FILE – In this Sept. 15, 2008, file photo tourists take pictures in New York’s Times Square as the days financial news about the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers is displayed on the ABC news ticker. After weeks of intense focus on the crisis in Syria, the White House is set to use the five-year anniversary of the Lehman Bros. collapse next week to lay claim to an economic turnaround and to press congressional Republicans to not use the threat of a shutdown or a unprecedented debt default to extract a delay of President Barack Obama’s signature health care. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is seeking credit for an economic turnaround, using the fifth anniversary of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank to highlight signs of recovery and to warn against potentially market-rattling fights over the federal budget and the nation’s debt ceiling.

Obama was scheduled to address the state of the economy Monday in a Rose Garden speech, accompanied by a selection of Americans who the White House says have benefited from the administration’s policies. The event marks the start of a week-long focus on the economy after a month of preoccupation with the crisis in Syria.

For Obama, the anniversary of Lehman’s bankruptcy in 2008, which marked the beginning of the global financial crisis and played havoc with an economy already in recession, is an opportunity to confront public skepticism about his stewardship of the economy and to put down his marker for budget clashes with Congress in the weeks ahead.

The White House’s National Economic Council on Sunday issued a report detailing economic policies that it says have helped shore up the financial system and put the economy on a path toward growth. Those steps range from the unpopular Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, that shored up the financial industry and bailed out auto giants General Motors and Chrysler, to an $ 800 billion stimulus bill to sweeping new bank regulations.

Gene Sperling, a top Obama adviser and director of the National Economic Council, said Obama’s policies “have performed better than virtually anyone at the time predicted.”

“We came in, stabilized the situation,” Obama told ABC’s “This Week” in an interview broadcast Sunday. He cited 42 months in a row of growth, 7½ million jobs created and a revitalized auto industry.

“The banking system works. It is giving loans to companies who can get credit. And so we have seen, I think undoubtedly, progress across the board,” he said.

But the public is not convinced that the economy is on the mend. Only one-third say the economic system is more secure now than in 2008, and 52 percent say they disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy, according to a Pew Research Center poll. There is still plenty of pain to justify their pessimism.

Despite job growth, the unemployment rate remains high at 7.3 percent. Though the rate has fallen, one of the reasons is because some people have dropped out of the labor force and no longer are counted as job seekers. The share of unemployed workers who have been unemployed for more than six months is more than double what it was in 2007 before the recession began. And the income gap between the very rich and the rest of the population is the biggest since 1928.

What’s more, some banks that received government aid because they were deemed “too big to fail” are now bigger than they were in 2008, although they are smaller as a share of the economy than the largest banks in other big economies. Three years after Obama signed a sweeping overhaul of lending and high-finance rules, execution of the law is behind schedule.

Eager to counter public sentiment, Obama intends to draw attention to signs of progress with daily events, including a speech Wednesday to the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs from the top U.S. companies, and a trip Friday to Kansas City to visit a Ford plant, where he will promote the strength of the auto industry.

Obama wants to reverse automatic spending cuts that kicked in in March, but at the same time has said he would not negotiate with Republicans over the nation’s debt ceiling. He said using the threat of default to make policy demands on the president “changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely.”

Obama’s remarks hinted at a potential constitutional confrontation with Republicans. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Some conservative Republicans say they will only extend current spending levels or increase the debt ceiling if Obama delays putting in place his health care law, a condition Obama has flatly rejected. Others say the scheduled spending cuts should stay in place to reduce the deficit.

“We need to start by keeping the cuts we’ve already agreed to,” Sen. Mitch McConnell said in a statement Sunday. “It’s time to get serious about the challenges we face and reposition America for growth and prosperity in the 21st century.”

___

Follow Jim Kuhnhenn on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jkuhnhenn

Associated Press

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Obama to tout economy while marking Lehman fall

Obama to Tout Health Law"s Insurance Rebate

If congressional Republicans could somehow repeal the Affordable Care Act, they would be picking the pockets of more than 8.5 million Americans who are receiving insurance rebates this summer, President Obama will say on Thursday.

The White House for weeks has looked for a ripe opportunity to argue that congressional Republicans, by voting nearly 40 time to repeal “Obamacare,” seek to rob American families of health coverage they need and use, as the 2010 law continues to go into effect through 2015.

A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services will provide just such an occasion Thursday morning: The president will appear in the East Room of the White House, surrounded by an invited group of everyday Americans who have received rebates from their health insurers. The event allows Obama to engage in some positive storytelling about the ACA as a “step away from the abstraction,” said one administration official, who spoke to reporters Wednesday on background.

One provision of the complex law says if health insurers fail to spend at least 80 percent of insurance premiums on better care and coverage, rather than administrative costs, the companies must remit a portion to their insured customers. As health care savings add up and disincentives for large rate hikes take hold in the insurance marketplace, the law envisions the rebates will eventually become nonexistent.

Obama will host the group of beneficiaries at a time when the rebates are a new, pro-consumer reality, and he hopes to make the point that insured American families living in the 50 states and Washington, D.C., received $ 131 from the companies, on average. Obama wants to say consumers are benefiting from the new law — not just the insurance companies, who expect a surge of new clients because Americans are now mandated to carry insurance. Counting U.S. territories, the average rebate from insurers to all U.S. families was $ 98, according to a chart compiled by the administration.

Separately, some states are reporting that insurance plans slated to be offered to the uninsured in those marketplaces are significantly less costly than insurance available now to individuals through the private marketplace, in many parts of the country. (A majority of Americans continue to have health coverage through their employers.)

The president believes the law’s measurable benefits can be counterweights to GOP talk of repealing Obamacare, as well as a partial rebuttal to media interest in the administration’s struggles to get uninsured Americans — particularly young and healthy people — to buy private coverage (and in some cases federally subsidized health insurance) this fall through the new state-based marketplaces.

Obama’s spokesman said implementation of the law is the administration’s main concern right now. But public relations and politics are clearly in the mix. Another administration official said Republicans helped transform the controversial law into “a political football.”

Hours after the officials briefed reporters, the House approved two separate measures to delay for a year the law’s requirement that individuals must have health insurance by 2014, and the companion requirement that most employers must cover their workers.

The administration previously announced it is delaying until 2015 the law’s mandate that businesses with 50 or more workers provide health insurance — to give employers more time to comply.

If House Republicans had their way, they would “overturn a law that is providing enormous benefits, and as we’ve seen again, will provide even more benefits to the American people,” Press Secretary Jay Carney argued during his afternoon briefing.

The administration will release a report from HHS on Thursday showing that in 11 states, the lowest cost insurance plans in the new exchanges appear to be, on average, 18 percent less costly than projections made by the Congressional Budget Office when the Affordable Care Act was enacted, officials said. The administration believes that lower costs, as the marketplaces ramp up, signal robust private competition and consumer choices, which officials anticipate will drive health costs down for everyone.

The administration selected 10 blue or purple states (plus Washington, D.C.) in its Thursday report because data was available for comparative purposes, the officials explained. The information offered included California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington state.

“When the president is there, standing on stage with individuals who have received a refund, the abstraction of a repeal vote becomes the reality of essentially saying, ‘Okay, should these folks be sending the money back?’ ” an official said.

Republicans’ repeal mantra “is all about the noise, it’s about the politics of the issue,” he said. 

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Obama to Tout Health Law"s Insurance Rebate