On July 12th Coral Davenport reported for Politico:
Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

While Republicans and polluting industries will celebrate, most know their victory will be fleeting…
Over the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out four rules that, in the absence of climate change legislation, eventually would give the executive branch command-and-control power to limit carbon pollution from power plants, factories

… Continue Reading

Reporting on the New Black Panther Party controversy, Politico’s Ben Smith recounted the facts of the case for a July 16th article:

The facts of the case are relatively simple. Two men were captured on a video standing outside a polling place in a black Philadelphia neighborhood on Election Day in 2008. One of the men had a nightstick, if an unclear agenda — though a member of the black nationalist New Black Panther Party, he had earlier professed loathing for the Democratic “puppet” candidate, Barack Obama, who went on to overwhelmingly carry that precinct.

Three Republican poll monitors filed complaints

… Continue Reading

Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn transcribed a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office on the Democrats latest cap and trade energy tax bill for Politico July 7th:

The CBO analysis of the American Power Act, championed by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) found that government revenues would grow by about $751 billion from 2011 to 2020 if the bill became law. By contrast, the legislation would create direct spending of $732 billion over the same 10-year period.

This is all true, but Samuelsohn ignores some elementary criticism of how the CBO is forced to score legislation by Congress. The … Continue Reading

Covering the June 29th Elena Kagan confirmation hearing, Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports:

Republicans are pouncing on the less-than-crystal-clear answer Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan gave late in Tuesday’s confirmation hearing to a question from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) about whether the government has the right to micromanage Americans’ diets.
…
While it’s true that Kagan never definitively answered Coburn’s question, the pair spent nearly 10 minutes discussing the issue. In comments she made after the brief [video] clip the GOP posted, Kagan indicated that laws that regulated noneconomic activity, which presumably would include eating, were beyond Congress’s commerce clause power.

How exactly is … Continue Reading

Politico’s Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman published an informative, if late, article on the growing political liability government unions are becoming for their political patrons June 6th. But their otherwise find narrative could have benefited from some facts. Smith and Haberman reported:

[A]nother consultant to major unions pointed to a different, more structural shift: Public sector unions are increasingly the face of American labor, and they have prospered as private sector unions disappeared and workers’ wages stagnated.

“The face of labor today is now public employee unions whose wages and benefits largely outstrip those of average Americans,” said the

… Continue Reading

Politico’s Jennifer Haberkorn’s May 26th article, Dems support Medicare brochure, article leaves out some key details about the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) produced four-page brochure. For starters she leaves out the fact that taxpayers are fooring the $18 million bill for producing and mailing the propaganda.

But more importantly she does not even try to identify or fact check any of the claims in the brochure. For example, the White House directed brochure says Obamacare will “provide you and your family greater savings and increased quality health care.” But the CMS’s own report on Obamacare … Continue Reading

The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990 set a $75 million liability cap beyond direct cleanup costs for any offshore oil spill. OPA also created a $1 billion Liability Trust Fund paid for by a 5-cent-per-barrel tax on the oil industry, later increased to 8-cents-per-barrel. Politico’s David Rogers reported May 10th that “payments from the fund — which covers not only damage claims but also restoring natural habitat, for example — are capped at $1 billion per incident. And while BP, as the responsible party, is charged with paying the full cost of the cleanup and oil removal, … Continue Reading

The Politico ran an April 15th story titled No meeting of minds on new ‘Contract with America’ where Jake Sherman reports:

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor wants a document, akin to Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract With America, that identifies specific pieces of legislation Republicans could pass if they win back the House. … But Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is leading the effort to craft the document, says that including specific legislation in the contract would smack of the backroom deals the GOP accuses Democrats of making, so “you won’t see it written out.” … Republicans say they

… Continue Reading

Politico’s Marin Cogan and James Hohmann try and “truth-squad” Rep. Paul Ryan’s claims at the February 25th Blair House health summit writing:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) claimed that under the Democrats’ plan, millions of seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage plans.

Not quite.

According to health policy experts, it’s fair to say that if the Democrats have their way, the benefits provided by Medicare Advantage will be reduced — which means that a number of seniors might choose not to enroll in the program in the future. That doesn’t mean people are going to “lose” their plans, exactly — just that fewer

… Continue Reading

Covering the health summit for Politico, Carrie Budoff Brown asserts under the headline “The big bipartisan lie” on February 25th:

If President Barack Obama really wanted to show he’s serious about winning over Republicans on health care reform, he could offer up some key concessions at Thursday’s summit, like caps on malpractice awards or allowing insurers to sell across state lines.

And if Republicans wanted to reciprocate, they could at least acknowledge the congressional scorekeepers are right — the Democratic plans cut the deficit in the long term and rein in health care costs.

But Brown has her facts wrong. … Continue Reading

Josh Gerstein and Kasie Hunt’s February 10th Politico article, GOP, White House go to war over terrorism does a fair job clipping from press releases sent between the White House and Congressional Republicans, but completely fails to get at the core reasons why Obama administration Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan has lost all credibility with Capitol Hill GOPers.

Hunt and Gerstein do report that Republicans are partially upset because “Brennan said that those who make politically motivated criticism over national security ‘only serve the goals of Al Qaeda.’” But that is just the beginning … Continue Reading

The banner over Roger’s, a Senior Congressional Correspondent at POLITICO, front-page piece for February 1, 2010 reads, “War Squeeze Obama Budget,” puts an erroneous political spin on the news surrounding the release of the President’s proposed federal budget. It may not be David Rogers’ fault. Editors pick headlines. Still, article’s skews the truth about proposed federal spending for the upcoming year.

Suggesting that defense spending on war-related costs for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are the principle factors driving a growing federal budget and exploding national debt … Continue Reading

On April 20, Politico posted a softball interview by Patrick Gavin with outgoing National Organization for Women (NOW), president Kim Gandy. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with having light interviews that may reveal a personal side of a public figure. Yet it’s frustrating that almost inevitably these interviews give a platform for misinformation that goes unchallenged.

For example, Gandy responds to a question about the one action she’d take as President by describing an executive order “prohibiting employment discrimination”: “My EO would require that every Cabinet department and agency, as well as federal contractors, establish a job evaluation, … Continue Reading