Will Hillary Clinton Run Against Her Husband’s Welfare Legacy?

This story has been updated.

Almost 20 years ago, when Bill Clinton made good on his campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it,’’ some of his oldest friends were beside themselves. The plan, as originally conceived, had been to pump significantly more money into programs designed to move poor single mothers off of assistance and into jobs, which couldn’t be done on the cheap. Yes, Clinton had proposed a strict time limit on benefits, but he had also pledged to “make work pay.” As it turned out, only one of those two things happened.

On August 22, 1996, Clinton proudly signed a Republican bill that pushed recipients out of the program after five years and ended an entitlement in place since the New Deal. “In a sweeping reversal of Federal policy, the New York Times story on the event began, “President Clinton today ended six decades of guaranteed help to the nation's poorest children.”

The bill wasn’t the solo handiwork of then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had proposed sending poor children to orphanages. Rather, a Democratic president with political capital to spare was freely approving what many in his party saw as a baldly punitive bill. And Hillary Clinton, who in this early phase of her campaign has made "the-deck-is-stacked" inequality a central focus, was fully in support.

Photographer: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

President Clinton meets with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Whip Trent Lott, and Representative Richard Gephardt in the White House in 1996.

Clinton's signing of the bill was a source of near-physical pain to someone like Peter Edelman, then Clinton’s assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, who as a speechwriter for Robert Kennedy had penned one of the earliest liberal critiques of welfare’s shortcomings, in 1967. RFK’s proposed antidote, however, had been a massive jobs program. Edelman had known Hillary Clinton since 1969, when he’d put her in touch with his wife, Marian Wright Edelman, who became her mentor and employer at the anti-poverty organization she'd just founded, the Children’s Defense Fund.

Via: Bloomberg.com

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CNN Setting Itself Up to Struggle Mightily on the Political Front Until Election Day; Here’s Why

The 2016 election is still 532 days away. During that time, we’ll crown two Stanley Cup champions, two NBA champs, two World Series winners and a Super Bowl victor. In other words, the big day ain’t coming for a long, long time.

But if you’ve watched all of the cable news networks for the past two months, you’d think Americans are casting their ballots this November, not the following one. A total of eight candidates have already announced, with several obvious ones on the verge of doing so (including your eventual winner, John Kasich). And in absorbing all of the coverage of Fox, CNN and MSNBC lately, one thing is abundantly clear:

CNN is nowhere near where it needs to be if it wants to be competitive.

As noted a few times in this space, CNN is in a better place since Jeff Zucker took over. From a ratings perspective, the network has jumped from third to second place. Part of the reason (besides MSNBC’s implosion) is Zucker’s push for more taped programming in the form of documentaries such as The Sixties and programs like Morgan Spirlock’s Inside Man, Mike Rowe’s Somebody’s Gotta Do It, and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. Another part is his All-All-In philosophy on certain breaking news, when one story dominates the networks for days and even weeks (or months, as was the case with MH370). Agree with the moves or not, the overall sentiment here was Zucker had to do something bold other than try to compete with MSNBC and Fox on the political opinion front, and going the old HBO/MTV route (offering more original programming and less of the original content model) was the right call given the hand he was dealt.

“Those two channels (Fox and MSNBC) are covering political news. We’re covering politics and much more,” Zucker stated in his first year at CNN. “Our competition now is two political channels that have actually left most of the actual news coverage to the side,”

And that thinking is all well and good during non-election seasons. But now that we’re basically in one, the nation’s focus is on the theatre that are presidential campaigns. It also happens to be the most important election of our lifetime (no really, this time it’s actually true), thanks to the very real possibility that not one, not two, but three Supreme Court justices will need to be replaced. You want to know where the real power lies in government? Try the Federal Reserve and the highest court in the land, not necessarily in that order. Of course, breaking news will still exist and CNN will still see bumps during those moments, but the perpetual political conversation threatens to overshadow standard breaking news even more, putting the network in a tough position until November 8, 2016 finally comes around.

In looking at the changes Zucker has made, the most noteworthy (and important) place to look is primetime. Erin Burnett—the network’s most consistent performer–is rightly still at 7:00p EST.Anderson Cooper is still at 8, but lost his 10:00 PM AC360° Later panel show. Piers Morgan was relieved of his duties at 9 and has been replaced by a mix of CNN Special Report (Tuesday this week) and various taped programming (Bourdain, Bourdain, Rowe, and Bourdain are on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week, respectively). At 10, CNN Tonight is essentially the Don Lemon hour, where the focus seemingly is on the more sensational stuff mixed with debates around race issues.

So what do all of those shows and personalities have in common? They’re all generally apolitical. Burnett and Cooper have a reporter’s DNA first and their programs largely reflect more of anchors breaking down big stories than what is normally the modus operandi of opinion hosts (staking out positions on big and/or controversial stories of the day and discussing/debating them throughout the program). The aforementioned taped programs don’t explore American politics in any capacity. Lemon’s show occasionally veers into this space, but invariably from a social issue perspective. In other words, CNN primetime will never be confused with MSNBC prime (Matthews, Hayes, Maddow, O’Donnell) and Fox (Van Susteren, O’Reilly, Kelly, Hannity).

When looking at CNN’s overall weekday schedule, the only true political host in the bunch is Jake Tapper, who currently sits in not-so-friendly timeslot of 4:00p EST. The network once had Crossfire 2.0 at 6:30p, but the show was pre-empted so many times due to the All-All-In strategy that it couldnever build a following (the chemistry between the cast wasn’t exactly magic, either). Candy Crowleyis no longer with the network. Peter Hamby—a big up-and-coming talent—has mostly left for Snapchat (he’ll still be a CNN contributor, but his primary responsibilities and time will be with Snapchat). Jay Carney lasted about six minutes before running for the truly big money at Amazon.

Via: Mediaite

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Gingrich: Obama's big debt limit deception

(CNN) -- As a historian and a former speaker of the House who negotiated successfully through two government shutdowns, a successful welfare reform bill, the first tax cut in 16 years and four balanced budgets, I am offended and a little frightened by President Barack Obama's deliberate dishonesty about the debt ceiling.

On Wednesday, speaking to the Business Roundtable, Obama said:

"You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt being used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt."

This is just plain false, and he knows it. That he would say something so factually false in a prepared text is very worrisome.

First of all, issues such as Obamacare don't have "nothing to do with the budget" and the idea that it is unusual for Congress to bring them into the debt ceiling debate is absurd. Far from having "nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt," Obamacare is a major part of the budget, and it is now projected to cost twice what the president promised.

The president's historical claim is completely wrong, as well. Let's set the record straight.

Debt ceilings have been used since President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s to enable conservatives to put limits on government spending.

Via: CNN

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Gingrich Urges 'No' Vote on Syria

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich urged Congress Tuesday to "vote no" on a military strike against Syria and instead begin debate on what he described as even bigger strategic challenges for the United States and the world. 

"The most powerful nation in the world does not need a three- or four-week debate about a limited, symbolic, tactical use of power," the Georgia Republican wrote Tuesday in an opinion piece for CNN, as he urged Congress to "vote no on a meaningless public relations use of military force against [Syrian President Bashar Assad]. 

Urgent: Should U.S. Strike Syria? Vote Here 

"What we do need are three debates about very large strategic challenges," he added, referring to Iran's nuclear program, the spread of radical Islamism, and the vulnerabilities in the U.S. military being created by "budgetary drawdowns."

"Each of these challenges is massively bigger and vastly more important to our survival than the symbolic Syrian attack," Gingrich said. 

The former 2012 GOP presidential candidate, now a co-host of CNN's "Crossfire," said that "launching a few missiles at Syria" as a tactical action "will not change history." But he insisted that refusing to address the three challenges he laid out would have much larger repercussions. 

Citing what he said were 12 years of doing nothing to address Iran's nuclear development efforts under both Presidents Obama and Republican George W. Bush, Gingrich said the time has finally come for "a national debate about stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons."

"We did nothing decisive for seven years under President George W. Bush even after he described Iran as part of the axis of evil (along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the North Korean dictatorship). In the first five years of Obama's administration, we have continued to do nothing decisive. Meanwhile, day by day the Iranian dictatorship works at acquiring nuclear weapons," he said. 

Via: Newsmax

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SUNDAY SHOWS: Republicans Tee Off on Libya

On Sunday's political talk shows, several Republicans criticized the Obama administration's response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Here's Senator John McCain of Arizona on CBS's Face the Nation:

You know, this administration is very good at touting and giving all the details like when they got Bin Laden. But now, we know that there were tapes, recordings inside the consulate during this fight, and they've gotten—they came—the F.B.I. finally got in and took those, and now they're classified as "top secret." Why would they be top secret? So the president went on various shows, despite what he said he said in the Rose Garden, about terrorist acts, he went on several programs, including "The View" including "Letterman" including before the U.N., where he continued to refer, days later, many days later, to this as a spontaneous demonstration because of a hateful video. We know that is patently false. What did the president know? When did he know it? And what did he do about it?

McCain said for "literally days and days" the White House "told the American people something that had no basis in fact whatsoever."

Newt Gingrich, on ABC's This Week:

But the bigger issue is, whether it’s unemployment or it is what happened in Benghazi, where we’ve had this strange situation over the weekend that the Secretary of Defense apparently refused to obey the President’s order, if the president is telling the truth and he actually instructed his assistants to get aid to Benghazi, we're now being told that the Secretary of Defense canceled that. And I think these kinds of things all drag down the Obama campaign.

Ohio senator Rob Portman talked on Fox News Sunday about a "shocking breakdown" with regard to the Obama administration's response:

This is not about politics.  This is about a huge national security issue that affects all of us and there was a shocking breakdown, operationally, not to have the security there in the first place.   And then not to respond to these guys, in their pleas for help for 7 hours, during a firefight.  It’s unbelievable and now, we are hearing that the president of the United States, based on his own words, issued a directive immediately after he found out about the firefight, saying that he wanted to be sure those people on the ground were safe and they were getting what they needed.  It didn't happen.  This means either that the president's order was not followed, which would be a breakdown in terms of the White House procedure, or, it means the order wasn’t issued.  We need to find out about this, it is not about politics, it is a very serious situation.  After the fact, of course, there’s also been a lot of confusion about what happened and why it happened.

Via: Weekly Standard

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Newt: It’s ‘Clear’ That Obama Team Had Biden Lie About Benghazi

Former Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich took to Twitter on Saturday morning to weigh in on the week’s vice presidential debate, bluntly attacking the Obama administration for what he sees as a deliberate and intentional lie about the fatal attack in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the deaths of ambassador Chris Stevens, among other Americans and Libyans.

Here’s what he had to say:

You’ll recall that VP Joe Biden denied that he and the President had had knowledge of repeated requests to the State Department for increased security in Libya.

Gingrich later added that, in the next two presidential debates, the number one goal should be “getting to truth.”

Via: Mediaite

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