The Week: “To become a United States senator, you must be at least 30 years old, have nine or more years of citizenship to your name, and live in the state you wish to represent. You also need, on average, $10.5 million.”
“In general, House races were far cheaper than Senate contests, with
victorious candidates raising an average of about $1.7 million.”
“It’s complicated.”
— Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, quoted by the New York Times, when asked about his trip to Afghanistan to meet with Afghan leaders.
If President Obama names Thomas Perez as his next secretary of Labor, Senate Republicans “will have a lengthy and contentious Washington track record to examine as they decide whether, or how strongly, to object to his nomination,” Roll Call reports.
“His three-and-a-half-year tenure at the Justice Department is likely to be the subject of much scrutiny if he is nominated to lead the Labor Department — a job that itself could prove contentious as ongoing debates over the National Labor Relations Board, the federal minimum wage, immigration and other workplace-related issues begin to heat up.”
A New York Times reporter met Shahbaz, a scammer who used fake bank alerts to make victims panic. When confronted, he just laughed—no guilt, no remorse.
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President Obama will formally kick off Organizing for Action, his newly-formed independent advocacy group, with a big speech Wednesday night.
ABC News reports it will be Obama’s “first in-person with the group’s core team of advisers, donors and grassroots organizers since its formation following the 2012 election. It comes as Obama seeks to re-energize his expansive grassroots campaign infrastructure around top second-term priorities — from new gun-control measures to comprehensive immigration reform and a plan to replace sequester — and cement the foundation for his presidential legacy.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) “once said women who didn’t want to view images of a fetus they were seeking to abort could simply close their eyes. His potential 2014 opponent, Democratic Rep. Allyson Schwartz, worked for a family planning clinic for more than a dozen years,” Politico reports.
“No other gubernatorial race in the country could provide a clearer test of the staying power of one of 2012’s fiercest messaging duels.”
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel returns from a three-day visit to Afghanistan that was “marred by a suicide bombing and security threats, a canceled news conference that was expected to highlight progress in the war, and heated accusations by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the U.S. military was colluding with the Taliban to prolong the American troop presence,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Even worse, Hagel returns to an in-box full of troubles in Washington. First on the list: how to absorb $47 billion in budget cuts mandated by Congress this year, with more trims to come.”
“Hagel has seemed low-key and at times unsure of himself since he won a bitter Senate confirmation battle Feb. 27. His reaction to his early burdens is tough to gauge, but he has yet to show the sparks that earned him maverick status when he served as a Republican senator from Nebraska who took controversial positions and issued blunt assessments, no matter the consequences.”
“Republicans will embark upon a major restructuring of their digital strategy as part of the Republican National Committee’s new autopsy of the 2012 elections,” NBC News has learned.
RNC chief of staff Mark Shields “was reluctant to divulge any specifics of the RNC’s new commitment to digital efforts, but said it would be far broader than any simple social media campaign.”
Early this morning, 115 cardinals will gather in the Sistine Chapel and begin the process of selecting a new pope.
Dylan Matthews has a good rundown of what happens and The Week looks at how the Vatican is trying to prevent leaks.
New York Times: “In the Senate, Democrats were putting the finishing touches on a budget they plan to introduce on Wednesday, their first in four years, while House Republicans were preparing to introduce a spending plan of their own on Tuesday morning.”
“The two proposals, which would set spending targets for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, will be miles apart ideologically and difficult to merge… But the fact that both houses of Congress are working on their budgets simultaneously after years of impasse raised some measure of hope — albeit slight — that Democrats and Republicans might be able to work out some sort of compromise.”
“Congress has some of the lowest approval ratings in recent history, but it hasn’t stopped House lawmakers from disproportionately loving their jobs,” Roll Call reports.
According to a new Congressional Management Foundation study, 89% of House members said they felt satisfaction that they were “performing an important public service.” When asked whether they were satisfied with their understanding of how their “job contributes to society as a whole,” 90% answered in the affirmative. In response to the statement, “my work gives me a sense of personal accomplishment,” 95% agreed.
President Obama “has spent the past week urging Republicans to reopen talks to reach a broad deficit-reduction deal, a so-called grand bargain. When he travels to Capitol Hill this week, he likely will find he has work to do to move his own party toward an agreement as well,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Some Democrats say they are worried that Mr. Obama will make concessions they dislike on entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare to build momentum for the talks, which likely would consider changes to other federal spending as well as taxes.”
Conservative House lawmakers are threatening to torpedo bills that violate the so-called Hastert Rule, according to The Hill.
“The warning, delivered Monday by two right-leaning rank-and-file members, puts more pressure on Speaker Boehner (R-OH) and his lieutenants to only pass bills that attract the support of ‘the majority of the majority.'”
Politico: “If it seems like inside-the-Beltway legislative wonkery, it’s not. Voting against the rule, as it’s called, is a loud statement that members disagree with leadership’s priorities. And since Democrats almost always oppose the rule — the measure that sets parameters for floor debate — GOP leadership has to have 218 Republicans on board to get it passed. If a rule fails, the House cannot debate the underlying bill, and the legislative process is ground to a halt.”
Peter Beinhart: “No Republican will enjoy credibility as a deficit hawk unless he or she acknowledges that George W. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited. No Republican will be able to promise foreign-policy competence unless he or she acknowledges the Bush administration’s disastrous mismanagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. It won’t be enough for a candidate merely to keep his or her distance from W. John McCain and Mitt Romney tried that, and they failed because the Obama campaign hung Bush around their neck every chance it got. To seriously compete, the next Republican candidate for president will have to preempt that Democratic line of attack by repudiating key aspects of Bush’s legacy. Jeb Bush would find that excruciatingly hard even if he wanted to. And as his interviews Sunday make clear, he doesn’t even want to try.”
Donald Trump told Fox News that he would be happy to pay for public tours of the White House since they’ve been paused because of the sequester.
Said Trump: “It’s always been open, it’s not a lot of money.”
Former Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) “may face an uphill battle trying to convince a federal judge that he properly used campaign funds to pay for his legal defense after being arrested for soliciting sex in an airport bathroom,” Roll Call reports.
A judge “likened it to using official re-election funds to pay for being arrested for robbing an airport kiosk or propositioning a prostitute.”
“Craig was arrested for lewd conduct in July 2007 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after allegedly soliciting sex in an airport bathroom. Craig tapped his foot inside his stall to indicate to other restroom patrons that he was seeking sex… Craig pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct the next month.”
USA Today: “According to the
White House, she and her staff are in the midst of strategizing how the
next four years might differ, or might not, from her first term as
FLOTUS, generally hailed as a rousing success with her clever blending
of conventional and unconventional.”
First Read: “On Tuesday, Obama heads to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Democrats; on Wednesday, he visits House Republicans; and on Thursday, the meetings are with Senate Republicans and House Democrats. Also this week, House Republicans and Senate Democrats are expected to unveil their budgets. One of the big reasons for Obama’s meetings with Democrats and Republicans is to keep the budget momentum going — to see if Washington can reach some kind of larger budget agreement (to eliminate or soften the sequester cuts) without disrupting the other parts of Obama’s agenda (like on immigration and guns).”
“The more positive momentum there appears to be for now, the less likely it is there’s a disruption before the fall on, say, government funding or debt ceiling. If there’s the sense of stalled momentum on budget, then the acrimony could bleed into other areas, like immigration, and stall everything. That’s what the White House is trying to avoid. But let’s also realize the other motivation for the Obama outreach: The president wasn’t gaining points by being in standoff mode (if anything, he was losing them in the polls). The White House wants that high ground back.”
Meanwhile, Roll Call notes the Senate will debate a budget resolution for the first time in 4 years this week.
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) was convicted of corruption charges, “ensuring a return to prison for a man once among the nation’s youngest big-city leaders,” the Washington Post reports.
“Jurors convicted Kilpatrick of a raft of crimes, including racketeering conspiracy, which carries a maximum punishment of 20 years behind bars. He was portrayed during a five-month trial as an unscrupulous politician who took bribes, rigged contracts and lived far beyond his means while in office until fall 2008.”
Detroit News: “Kilpatrick will learn shortly whether he is headed directly to prison today after being found guilty on 24 counts in his corruption trial earlier Monday morning.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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