September 23rd, 2011
5. GOP Divisions Widen, Grow in Impact
While Congress continues to debate budget issues, Republicans are having difficulty reconciling differences within their own party. Emerging in the 2012 midterm elections, the Tea Party faction of the GOP has sometimes differed from the party’s mainstream, but recent events have broadened and highlighted these differences. A major point of contention between the two groups comes over the defense budget. Traditional GOP members, such as Representative Buck McKeown, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, continue to emphasize the importance of defense spending while the Tea Party has expressed a willingness to cut the defense budget to avoid raising taxes. Further disagreements within the Republican Party prevented the success of the most recent Continuing Resolution, as members of the Tea Party voted with Democrats against the bill to prevent its passage, failing to eliminate the impending possibility of government shutdown.
The split within the Republican Party has the potential to affect even more bills in the coming months as the Congressional calendar fills up with important year-end legislation. In addition, as conservative candidates vie for the Republican presidential nomination, their specific plans for deficit reduction, as well as their other policies, will come under increasing scrutiny from the Tea Party. This will have important consequences for the Republican primary, as the race solidifies into a two-man race between moderate Mitt Romney and conservative Rick Perry. The split could also yield strange voting coalitions in Congress, with the Tea Party voting with Democrats to kill legislation favored by mainstream Republicans (as in the aforementioned Continuing Resolution), or possibly with traditional GOP Congressmen aligning with conservative elements of the Democratic party in order to pass legislation.
4. Push for Palestinian Statehood Signals Shift in International Climate
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continues to push on with a mostly symbolic vote to grant Palestinian statehood at the U.N. general assembly this week, despite threats of a U.S. veto. The Palestinians have slowly built international support in recent years. President Sarkozy of France stated that he wants further peace talks between Israel and Palestine to occur instead of a push for Palestinian statehood, but suggested that France would recognize Palestine if those talks fall through. Israel has announced that they are open to talks, but have already denied talking to a united Palestinian government earlier this year.
Palestine is also getting further support from many of its Middle Eastern neighbors. Egyptians and Jordanians have both held massive demonstrations at the Israeli embassies located in their respective capitals. Egyptian protesters went so far as to tear down the embassy walls and storm the building, dampening prospects for Israeli-Egyptian relations to remain similar to what they’ve been in past years. The Turkish government has recently thrown their weight behind Palestine as well, particularly since the Israeli flotilla raid last April when a Turkish activist was killed. Palestine has reached the point where a vote on its statehood, while purely symbolic due to U.S. veto threats, might occur for the first time in decades.
3. EU Credit Crisis Pushes Member States Further Apart
As Greek social unrest continued to worsen this week in the face of Eurozone and IMF-imposed austerity measures, members of the Hellenic Parliament have issued repeated demands for additional funds from Germany, the leading Eurozone economy. The move comes in conjunction with a downgrade of two major French banks, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole by Moodys, a credit rating agency. The reason for the downgrade is tied to events like the Grecian demand for additional German funds. Peripheral Eurozone countries are having an increasingly difficult time borrowing funds to finance government operations from unemployment and welfare programs to defense.
As the debt of these states, most prominently Greece, increases without a major move by core Eurozone countries such as France and Germany to intervene, banks are seen as increasingly unable to obtain repayment of sovereign debt from these states. As a result, the cost of borrowing for these and other Eurozone countries has increased, further tightening the money supply and continuing the cycle. With experts arguing for an “orderly default” in Greece and its withdrawal from the Eurozone, the future of the European Union has begun to look ever more fractious and unstable.
2. New Patent Law Changes Small But Crucial Policy
This past week President Obama signed into law the “America Invents Act,” a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Patent system. The law had broad support in the Senate, passing with an 89-9 vote, and President Obama eagerly signed off on the legislation, touting it as an example of his focus on promoting jobs. The law switches America from a “First to Invent” system, in which patents are awarded based on whomever first has an idea, to a “First to File” system, in which patents are awarded based on whomever is the first to file for a patent on a particular idea.
The law has stirred up a great deal of controversy. Proponents of the law argue that it will free patent holders from drawn out and costly legal cases over purposely vague patents filed with the intention of gaining large settlements from corporations. Opponents counter with the view that the law favors corporations who have the ability to hire a large legal staff focused solely on filing a mass of patents quickly. In reality the new legislation’s impact will probably fall somewhere in between these views. The new law is important because it puts the U.S. on the same patent system as the rest of the world but also because it represents a rare bipartisan triumph by Congress. Lawmakers will be patenting each other on the back for this one.
1. Aftermath of Civil War Creates Difficulties for New Libyan Government
The war in Libya is nearing an end, but the revolutionary National Transitional Council still faces a swath of internal difficulties as it consolidates its hold on the country. Regional differences among the revolutionary forces have begun to affect politics as rebuilding begins. One of the clearest divides seems to be between the rebels from Benghazi in the east and those from Misrata and the Nafusa mountains in the west. The NTC, which originated in Benghazi, has been accused by those in the west of poorly representing the rest of the Libya. To further complicate the situation, the city of Misrata, which survived an extended siege by Qadhafi loyalists and is a sizable source of rebel manpower, has operated independently of the NTC.
These divisions have the potential to spark more unrest in Libya. The violence in the country has caused a proliferation of small arms, as both sides equipped their often unprofessional forces for battle. Compounding this problem is the fact that Qadhafi stockpiled massive amounts of heavy weapons, some of which are missing from their former warehouses. The NTC is trying to gain control of weapons by forcing owners to register their firearms. The hope of the NTC is that this proliferation of arms can be reversed before the various rebel factions take their disagreements to the streets.
0. President’s Primetime Jobs Proposal Possesses Little Significance
On September 8th, President Obama presented to Congress his American Jobs Act, a $447 billion stimulus package designed to jump-start a stagnating economy in advance of the 2012 election season. On its merits, the plan contains several ideas favored by economists, including $245 billion in payroll tax cuts and $140 billion in infrastructure spending. As for the plan’s political implications, progressives, encouraged that the President finally seemed to be taking a vocal stand on the economy, also applauded the speech.
Obama’s proposal, however, seems unlikely to result in any substantive legislation on the issue and if it does, is unlikely to resemble whatever legislation ultimately emerges. Despite Obama’s repeated pleas to Congress to “pass this jobs plan right away,” the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives have little incentive to hand a president of the opposing party a policy victory with an election just fourteen months away. Congressional Republicans have vigorously opposed the President’s agenda throughout the 112th Congress, even in the face of a government shutdown in April and a credit default in August, and this new stimulus package has no inherent deadline that will apply political pressure to Congressional Republicans. Politically, many observers saw the speech signalling Obama’s transition to a more campaign-oriented stance as the 2012 presidential election draws nearer. But even as a signal of a shift in emphasis on the part of the Obama administration, the speech possesses little significance; the introduction of a newly campaign-focused administration can be attributed to any of a number of events in the past several months and the administration’s focus on the 2012 election is unlikely to truly begin until this legislative session ends on December 8.
