Open Letter to Congresswoman Capito

Dear Mrs. Capito,

         I received your response to my letter urging you to break ranks with your party and vote to end the government shutdown without delay. I find your response to be disingenuous, and my response is threaded into yours in italics.

Dear Mr. Epstein:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding government operations and a continuing resolution; it was good to hear from you and I appreciate the opportunity to learn your views on this issue. 

I wonder how many of your constituents have asked you to work with Democrats to move the country forward instead of voting with Tea Party Republicans to hold back the economy. I have written several times, but you have not seemed to listen. 

As you know, due to the failure to pass a continuing resolution before the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2013, many operations of the federal government were forced to close. Before the shutdown took place, I voted three times to avoid a government shut down by passing a continuing resolution.   Both before and throughout the shutdown, I have encouraged my colleagues to negotiate in a bipartisan way to address the fiscal issues facing our nation while keeping the government open.

Who is responsible for the failure of Congress to pass a continuing resolution or negotiate a workable budget before September 30? You and your Republican colleagues, Mrs. Capito. You voted three times to pass continuing resolutions that could not pass the Senate and would not be signed the president. You voted not to fund the government unless Democrats agreed to defund the Affordable Care Act and keep millions of Americans from enjoying the benefits of affordable health insurance. Your votes cost the American people billions of dollars, slowed the economy, damaged our credibility around the world, and hurt families. You never spoke out against the shutdown or against those Republicans who almost drove us into default on our debt.

I believe there is a consensus among the American people that the shutdown has gone on too long and I am happy to inform you that I voted in favor of bipartisan legislation to reopen the government. Congress is supposed to be about fixing problems and negotiating to a better end, not hurting the well-being of the constituents we represent because of party differences.

Mrs. Capito, one day of government shutdown would have been too long. The consensus of the American people was clear before the shutdown began: it was a bad idea and would damage the economy; yet you voted multiple times to place unacceptable conditions on reopening government.. Have you finally learned that Congress is supposed to fix problems and negotiate? Then speak out against your colleagues who refuse to! You voted to reopen the government only when you realized the favorability ratings of your party had reached an all time low of 22%.  Do you think we should be proud of you for voting to keep the country functioning for a couple months after having shut it down for three weeks?

The bipartisan agreement funds federal government programs through January 15, 2014 and lifts the debt ceiling through February 7, 2014.  This legislation also includes back pay to furloughed federal workers, and requires income verification for those seeking health-insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

Why did you and your colleagues vote to pay federal employees for not working during the shutdown? Perhaps you realized that they are working hard for the American people despite the fact that you treated them with such disrespect by refusing to do your job and pass a budget in a timely fashion. Though for years you have been voting for extreme Republican budgets that defund many important government programs, during the shutdown you voted for bills to fund them, though not to fully fund the government and stop the shutdown.

I will continue to work with my colleagues to resolve ongoing fiscal issues and work to minimize the remaining effects of the shutdown on West Virginians. Again, thank you for contacting me. I look forward to hearing from you again soon and invite you to visit my website for further information and to sign up for my e-mail newsletter. It is an honor to serve you.

        

         Forgive me if I don’t believe you at this point. If you want to represent the interests of your constituents, you should renounce your Republican colleagues and join the Democratic Party, or at least announce your independence. You and your Republican colleagues have sabotaged the American economy through intransigence and refusal to compromise costing millions of jobs and, it has been estimated, nearly a trillion dollars in revenues that might have been generated had you not voted time and again for policies that slowed growth. If you see me, it will not be visiting your website, it will be carrying a sign outside your office and shouting “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Shelley Capito must go!”

Republican Malpractice

When things go really badly at the hands of a professional, but a law hasn’t been broken, you can sue; doctors and lawyers can be fired or sued for malpractice, teachers and nurses for incompetence. But what do you do when your representatives in Congress are not only ineffective, but doing harm to you, your neighbors, and your country? I’m talking about Shelley Moore Capito, David McKinley, and most of the Republicans in the House.

First they refused to negotiate a budget Senate Democrats, so in order to keep the government operating they have to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR). But by attaching unacceptable, unprecedented conditions to the CR they have partially shut down the United States government, costing the country billions of dollars, putting people out of work, denying approved benefits to children and families, closing parks, and so on.

This isn’t the first time Capito and her Republican colleagues have done outright damage to our economy through their strategy to fight the agenda of the President and the Democrats rather than negotiate agreements. In 2011 they filibustered the American Jobs Act, refusing to allow spending on critical infrastructure projects which would have put millions of Americans back to work, instead sending us into what many called a double dip recession. They brought us so close to defaulting on our debts by threatening not to raise the debt ceiling in 2012 that the United States lost its triple A credit rating causing interest rates to rise. The deal which finally got Republicans to agree to pay the nation’s bills for another year, known as the Sequester, is basically an across the board cut of government spending considered so repulsive to both parties that they were sure a budget agreement could be reached before it went into effect. But were Republicans willing to compromise on taxes and revenues to achieve a budget deal? No. So they are responsible for forcing the Sequester, which has slowed the pace of the recovery since January.

Essentially, since the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, aka, the Stimulus, Republicans have pursued an unrelenting strategy of austerity in the face of a recession rivaled only by the Great Depression in its breadth and depth. The Congressional Budget Office (the most widely accepted non-partisan authority) estimates the Stimulus saved over two million jobs, boosting the economy by 3.5%. Lest you forgive Republican austerity by suggesting that it sounds like a good idea to tighten your belt in hard times, you should know that the most widely accepted economic theory, known as Keynesian, advises governments to do the opposite to create growth. As noted Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University said recently (and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman of Princeton echoes), “There is no instance of a large economy getting to growth through austerity. Austerity leads the economy to perform more poorly. It leads to more unemployment, lower wages, more inequality.” After recovery, when unemployment is down and people and businesses have more money to spend is the time to use additional tax revenue to pay down debt.

So how can we hold Shelley Moore Capito, David McKinley and other Republicans in the House and Senate accountable for the damage they have done and continue to do to the economy, by which I mean us, the American People? The economy is an abstract concept, but it’s not just about business, industry, banks and Wall Street; it’s about our money—money flowing to us from jobs in the private sector and in government, money collected in taxes and coming back to us through government spending on the military, the elderly, the infirm, the poor, and through all the important programs of the federal government: the Center for Disease Control, the FDA, the FBI, the NSA, National Parks, WIC, Head Start, and yes, the Affordable Care Act, which is finally going to take effect fully in January.  Millions and millions of Americans who couldn’t get health insurance either because they couldn’t afford it, because their jobs didn’t provide it, because they had some illness or were in an age group or category of people who might be prone to an illness, so they were denied coverage, or because they’d reached some cap of benefits in their insurance, will finally be eligible to receive Medicaid or subsidies to make their health insurance affordable.

This is what West Virginia Republican Representatives Shelly Moore Capito, David McKinley, and their Republican colleagues have shut down our government to prevent, and why we must finally hold them accountable for the damage they have done to us and the economy. Be outraged. Be angry, but be persuasive. Get out and talk to your friends and neighbors, and do what you can to undo the lies they hear on Fox News and talk radio. Let’s fire Capito and McKinley and elect a better, more responsible, pro-growth, anti-austerity government in 2014!

published in the Charleston (WV) Gazette Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Lessons Learned? 9/11 and Syria

On September 11^th this year, as in previous years, a flurry of discussion took place about the lessons we should learn. “Never Forget,” some proclaim, carrying a general message some mean as “Always remember those who died and keep them in your hearts,” and some mean as “Never forget that America was attacked by extremist Muslims, and we must be ever vigilant.”  Some people say the primary lesson should be one of seeking to make the world a more peaceful, loving place, a sentiment I wholeheartedly endorse.

However, I believe there are lessons to be learned by reflecting on the tragedy of 9-11 in addition to those that compel us to educate ourselves and others about our mutual humanity; beyond the fear of terrorist attack and the monumental efforts our nation has made to try to prevent attacks ranging from airport security to making war on terrorists. Most of us could understand attacking Afghanistan and supporting the Afghanis who overthrew the Taliban. The Taliban was a fundamentalist Muslim government that offered shelter and support to Al Qaeda, who had attacked us on our own soil: an act of war.

But with Iraq we learned, or relearned--many of us learned this during the Vietnam years--of the danger of our government taking us to war on a lie and keeping us at war to save face.

George W. Bush attacked Iraq claiming we were threatened from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and intentionally and falsely connecting Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda. There’s a lesson there about holding our government accountable and being skeptical even when we feel the stirrings of patriotic fervor engendered by an attack on Americans wherever they are in the world. Congress gave Bush authorization to attack based on the misinformation provided them.

Once again, on the anniversary of 9/11 we were in the midst of contemplating military action in a Middle Eastern country, Syria.  Once again, the focus was on weapons of mass destruction. Would this be a repeat of George Bush’s rush to war in Iraq? Today’s Congress and the American people are understandably hesitant to support action against Syria based on incomplete and unconfirmed intelligence reports. I am so appreciative that our Commander in Chief in his remarks on September 10 framed his policy objectives and the reasons it is so important to punish the use of chemical weapons by Bashar Assad’s regime. In the absence of a U.N. mandate to enforce the chemical weapons ban because Russia has blocked action against Syria, America can provide leadership in degrading or destroying Assad’s ability to use them again. Near the end of his remarks, he mentioned the possibility that use of force could be avoided if the plan proffered by the Russians results in taking those weapons of mass destruction out of Assad's hands and destroying them.

George W. Bush started with a goal of regime change in Iraq, and in the midst of his march to war, nothing, not UN weapons inspectors saying they could not find evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, not the debunking of false or misleading intelligence on "yellow cake uranium" and "aluminum tubes", was going to stop him. Obama, on the other hand, is using all available tools, from the threat of military force to diplomacy. Who would ever have thought a few weeks ago that Russia would offer to sign on to taking control of and destroying Syria's chemical weapons arsenal or that Assad would even admit to having them?

I hear pundits and read news articles that suggest that Obama has shown weakness by first deciding to ask Congress to endorse the use of force and then agreeing to pursue a peaceful solution after he had drawn a “red line” and made threats. Since when is it weakness for a president to include Congress in decisions about war and peace? And since when is it weakness to seek diplomatic solutions before using force? If this is weakness, then I think we’re better off with a weak President willing to pursue all options than a so-called strong President like George W. Bush who feeds Congress false information to get its endorsement, then sticks with his plan, rejects offers of peaceful solutions, and takes us into war regardless of the facts.

We are watching a Nobel Peace Prize winning world leader at work. Peace is not necessarily attained by spouting beautiful words about peace; it sometimes arrives as an end result of war, but at what cost? Peace can, however, be attained by forcing brutes to behave themselves with a credible threat of force. That is a lesson we can also learn from 9-11 and its aftermath.

Paul Epstein, a retired teacher, is a musician and writer living in Charleston

Report Card Time for Government

In public education, the calendar year historically begins after Labor Day and ends soon after Memorial Day. Having spent over half my life on that schedule, my years end in June. A review of the major stories should help me complete report cards for our government.

On September 11 of last year, protests and an attack on the U.S. Embassy relating to an anti-Muslim video erupted in Cairo, Egypt. There were also reports of an attack on a consulate in Benghazi. In the days following, attacks on U.S. Embassies relating to the video occurred in more than a dozen countries. In this climate, President Obama and his spokespersons attempted to address the tragic loss of life of U.S. Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans in Libya as well as the ongoing threats of violence using language condemning both the attacks and the makers of the inflammatory video.

Mitt Romney and other Republicans accused the President of sympathizing with the attackers, then of incompetence in responding to the attacks, and finally in the months that followed, of falsely attributing the attacks to protesters instead of an organized terrorist group. Worse than Watergate, some pundits and politicians screamed. After the recent release of e-mails detailing how the infamous talking points were collaboratively revised, the satirical fake news website, The Onion, might have written this headline: “White House Releases Bland, Inaccurate Statement: CIA, State Department remove all references that make them look bad”

In October, Hurricane Sandy swept up the East Coast killing almost 300 in seven countries. It was only a category 2 when it reached the Northeast, but storm surges combined with high tides causing massive flooding.  It was second only to Katrina in the cost of the damage it wreaked in 24 states, including massive power outages and damage in West Virginia.

Coming one week before a Presidential election, there were inevitable political effects. The Bush administration’s inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina had been the beginning of the end of his administration. He had reacted forcefully, deploying all the nation’s resources to the threat of terrorism, yet with thousands of vulnerable citizens stranded without food, water, or toilets, he defended his FEMA director, saying, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!”  In contrast, the Obama administration’s response to Superstorm Sandy was early, coordinated, and effective, drawing the warm praise of plainspoken Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. Headline: “Climate Change a Factor in Severity of Storm: Christie bucks Party, thanks President for doing a good job on recovery effort.”

In November, Obama was reelected. Republicans were caught by surprise, confident that no president could win reelection with such high unemployment. In disarray, the party was torn between those who say the problem was the candidate and those who say it is time to stop being obstructionist, start working with the president, and try to win over Latinos, the fastest growing demographic group in the country. Possible headline in The Onion: “Rich White Men Spend Election Season Criticizing Poor, Unemployed, Seniors, Immigrants, Women, and Gays: Ask why didn’t they vote for us?”

A month later, the nation was horrified by the murder of 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary. A bill to reduce gun violence through tightened regulations looked possible for the first time since the Brady handgun bill was passed and signed by Bill Clinton. Headline: “Assault Rifles With Large Capacity Clips Must be Kept Out of Hands of Emotionally Unstable: Every American home needs at least one for self-defense”

As the new year dawned, the “fiscal cliff” threatened increased taxes for nearly everyone and across the board spending cuts known as the Sequester. It was averted when a minority of Republicans voted with Democrats to raise tax rates for those with incomes over $400,000 and delay the Sequester until March 1, hoping for a budget deal. However, Tea Party Republicans got their mojo back and forced their fellow Republicans to hold the line, allowing the cuts to go into effect. The increased taxes on wealthy Americans haven’t destroyed the economy as Republican candidates have for years claimed they would. Headline: “Republicans Force Trillion Dollar Cuts in Government Spending Threatening Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs: Our agenda is to create jobs, Republican leadership proclaims.”

In March, the Civil War in Syria entered its third year. A brutal dictator who would not acquiesce to reforms when citizens protested peacefully is being supported by Russia and Iran. At least 80,000 have died with no end in sight. Having instituted policies to end two wars he inherited, Obama bides his time, waiting for international consensus, despite a few Republicans trying to push him to intervene militarily. Headline: “Arab Nation’s Civil War Becomes Sectarian Conflict: Dictator blames terrorists, Israel, and the United States.”

On April 15, two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding hundreds. An American city entered lockdown as police in military garb went house to house in some neighborhoods in a made-for-TV manhunt. The two Chechen immigrant brothers allegedly responsible, one a naturalized U.S. citizen, gave anti-immigration reform advocates a security argument to bolster their case. Headline: “After Terrorist Bombing, American Citizens Allow Police to Protect Them.”

In May, three huge stories emerged. One featured a master of the theatrical on the world stage, North Korea, threatening to start a nuclear conflagration.  In another, a unit of the IRS was found to have targeted “social welfare” groups with “Tea Party” in their names for extra scrutiny, thinking they just might be engaging in politics. With a House Committee making one more attempt to make something out of Benghazi, and the news that AP reporters phone records had been seized by the Justice Department in a leak investigation, pundits and media declared a trifecta of scandals that might be Obama’s Waterloo. But by the end of the month, it was deadly tornados of historic proportions that grabbed our attention. Headline: “North Korea, Benghazi, IRS Targeting, and Seizing of AP Phone Records No Longer Newsworthy: Could overwhelming majority of scientists possibly be right about climate change?”

We live in a world in which it’s hard to decide what headline grabbing news is truly significant. When a terrorist or other maniacal murderer succeeds, we are justifiably outraged and terrorized. We may want lawmakers or police to better protect us. But every day thirty people are shot and killed in the U.S. with guns, and Congress cannot find the courage to tighten background checks or limit high capacity magazines. By opposing almost everything the President suggests, the Republican Party has become a party of extremists. They get failing grades and Not Satisfactory for Works Well with Others.

Presidents are always attacked by their political enemies when problems occur within government. Do they act quickly and with integrity to investigate, assign appropriate blame, and punish those responsible? Or do they cover up and deny? Obama has proven to be in the former category. He acts decisively, but not until he has the facts. Those responsible are fired or prosecuted after appropriate investigation. He would rather keep government secrets and behind the scenes deliberations private, but when he has to, he releases them, and we see them for what they are: the efforts of earnest government employees to do their jobs, though sometimes making grievous errors in judgment.  Our President is working for us every day: trying to improve the economy, create jobs, improve our infrastructure, and keep us safe in a dangerous world. This is why we reelected him. This is why none of the so-called scandals have damaged him severely. This is why the Republicans, if they want the opportunity to govern again, should work with him instead of against him.

We have to give President Obama low marks for setting unrealistic goals for his first term: he thought if he offered legislation Republicans had supported in the past, they would vote for it. He gets an A for effort, even though we are disappointed that so many important issues remain unsolved: gun violence, immigration, and a “Grand Bargain” to undo the sequester, close tax loopholes, reduce deficits, and insure the health of Medicare and Social Security. 

But what grade do we, the voters, get? Have we done everything we can to put the right people in office? Can we do more to help educate our fellow citizens on the issues? Another election is just around the corner in 2014. If we want the President to solve problems, we need to put lawmakers in office who will support his agenda. If we are to earn an A, this is the headline we need to see: “House Goes to Democrats: Filibuster proof Senate insures President will complete agenda.” It’s too much of a fantasy to wish for this one: “Republicans Vow to Work with President to Solve Nation’s Problems.”

Paul Epstein, a retired teacher, is a musician and writer living in Charleston