Mitch McConnell Compares ‘Obsession’ With Closing Gender Pay Gap To Blowing ‘A Few Kisses’

BY REBECCA LEBER/Think Progress

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) honored Equal Pay Day — a day that symbolizes the amount of time it takes women to earn what men make in a year — by accusing Democrats and President Obama of a “never-ending political road show” that merely blows “a few kisses” to their voter base.

“Instead of focusing on jobs, he launched into another confusing attack on the left’s latest bizarre obsession,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Just think about that. The percentage of Americans in the workforce is at an almost four-decade low, and Democrats chose to ignore serious job-creation ideas so they could blow a few kisses to their powerful pals on the left.”

McConnell argued the fact that women still earn 77 percent of what men make should take a backseat to more serious Republican priorities. These priorities typically include building Keystone XL pipeline and repealing Obamacare (which Republicans have attempted more than 50 times).

Leading up to Democrats’ latest push for equal pay, Republicans have claimed that the gender wage gap is a “myth” and that it is “condescending” to discuss. But the reality is that women still earn less even when they achieve the same education and job level, with gender discrimination accounting for as much as much as 40 percent of their pay gap.

In the past, McConnell’s voting record against women has not stopped him from taking credit anyway. He once touted the Violence Against Women Act to women voters, although he opposed it in both 1993 and 2012. McConnell has also opposed both the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. And the very health care law that McConnell wants to repeal prevents insurance companies from charging women more and ensures 

Election officials catch dead man donating $100,000 to Sen. Mitch McConnell

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

Officials with a Kentucky super PAC supporting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blame a computer error for a $100,000 contribution that appeared more than a month after the donor died. Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party filed a federal lawsuit to lift limits on posthumous donations.

“This is pure free speech,” an attorney for the Libertarian party, Alan Gura told USA Today. “A dead person can’t corrupt someone.”

The lawsuit, currently pending before a federal appellate court, seeks to count a $217,000 donation by a deceased Tennessee man, Raymond Groves Burrington, as a lump sum donation for the party’s national committee instead of dispersing it in annual installments. Records show a trust in Burrington’s name has already given the party $153,200.

Federal regulations currently limit posthumous political donations to no more than $5,200 a year for a federal candidate during an election cycle and $32,400 for parties.

USA Today reported that 32 people listed as dead on federal campaign records are credited with more than $586,000 in contributions since Jan. 1, 2009, with just under 20 percent of that coming from the donation to McConnell’s group, Kentuckians for Strong Leadership, from Texas home developer Bob Perry, a longtime Republican supporter.

The donation was initially filed with the Federal Election Commission with a June 3 date, only Perry actually died on April 13. The group’s treasurer, Caleb Crosby, told the Louisville Courier-Journal on July 31 that the check for Perry’s contribution was actually received on April 12, and was subsequently corrected with federal officials.

But the donation was quickly questioned by an advisor for Alison Lundergan Grimes, McConnell’s Democratic challenger in his re-election bid.

“This raises a lot of questions that Kentucky voters deserve answers to,” Jonathan Hurst told theCourier-Journal. “The report appears to be as dishonest as their television ads.”

The Tea Party Is Ready To Bid A Tearless Goodbye To Mitch McConnell

By DEBORAH MONTESANO/Addicting Info

Why is U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell sitting in the back of the room, twiddling his thumbs, as the Senate pushes for bipartisan compromise on difficult issues? When the heat was on last week for an agreement between the GOP and Democrats to avoid the end of the filibuster, McConnell was nowhere to be seen–and it was thanks to the Tea Party
.

McConnell faces a race for re-election next year and, until recently, thought he could focus his efforts on the likely Democratic challenger, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. On Tuesday, however, Tea Party member Matt Bevins–an investment adviser who has never held public office–sent out a media advisory stating his intention to challenge the incumbent senator in the 2014 primary. Bevins will be making appearances around Kentucky for the rest of the week to create visibility for his campaign.

In what must be an ominous sign for McConnell, 15 local tea party groups appealed to national tea party groups to withdraw endorsements of the senator that they’ve already made. In a letter, the groups wrote:

Senator McConnell’s Progressive Liberal voting record, his absolute iron fisted rule over the Republican Party in Kentucky and his willingness to roll over and cede power to President Obama and the Liberals in Washington, prove that he is no friend to the American people or the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Your endorsement undermines the work of the real grassroots Tea Party organizations all over Kentucky. Had you taken the time to reach out to us, you would have learned that the Tea Parties in Kentucky do NOT support Senator McConnell’s campaign.

Uh-oh, McConnell. There’s more. Senator Rand Paul, who has also pledged his support to the minority leader, refused to discourage Bevins from making the challenge by saying:

I’m not giving (Bevin) encouragement or discouragement. It’s a free country and anybody who wants to run, can.

Still, there’s a silver lining to Bevin’s challenge–maybe not for McConnell, but certainly for the Democratic opposition. The fact that the Senate’s minority leader has been endorsed by two national TeaParty groups, TeaParty.net and Tea Party Nation, but not by the local groups, indicates a split in their movement. In May, Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation made the case that the movement needs to“grow up” and “pick our fights”, writing on the group’s website:

For those who scream that McConnell isn’t ‘Tea Party’ enough, would you prefer Harry Reid?

So expect McConnell to continue twiddling his thumbs as others–like John McCain, who is not up for reelection–step in to fill the GOP leadership gap on issues requiring bipartisan cooperation, like immigration reform and the budget ceiling. By avoiding any further erosion of his position as a conservative, McConnell seeks to inoculate himself from further Tea Party accusations–and opens himself up to vulnerability from the probable Democratic candidate.

Alison Lundergan Grimes announced her candidacy on July 1st, hoping to take advantage of both McConnell’s deep unpopularity and her own status as underdog. In 2011, she won the office of Secretary of State by first defeating the Democratic incumbent and then the Republican who had Tea Party backing. She won the most votes of any Democratic candidate statewide.

After her announcement for the Senate race, Guy Cecil, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, pointed out a poll showing that over 60 percent of Kentucky voters disapprove of McConnell’s job performance. Cecil had this to say about Lundergran Grimes’ prospects:

The Kentucky Senate race is now a toss up. Mitch McConnell is the most unpopular incumbent in the entire country. He is a relic of the past and a symbol of everything that is wrong with Washington. Kentuckians want a change.

McConnell is starting the race with a huge war chest of over $8.6 million. However, Lundergan Grimes comes from a political family with extensive connections and the possibility of raising large amounts of cash herself. She lost no time in framing the race from the perspective of a younger, fresher face, saying:

The question never was, is Mitch McConnell vulnerable? The question never was, does Kentucky deserve a change? The answer to both of those questions remains and is, yes.

I agree with thousands of Kentuckians that Kentucky is tired of 28 years of obstruction. That Kentucky is tired of someone who has voted against raising the minimum wage while all the while quadrupling his own net worth.

So, here’s McConnell’s dilemma: stop the obstructionism and face the wrath of the Tea Party, or continue with that course and face the wrath of voters who want to see progress on the issues that most affect their daily lives.

Whatever the outcome, the nation is already reaping the benefits of the race: no more Mitch McConnell in their faces until at least after the primary season is over.

Secret audio: McConnell, staff scheme about Ashley Judd’s ‘emotionally unbalanced’ mental health

By David Edwards/Raw Story

In a February meeting, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his staff gathered to discuss tactics for defeating possible Democratic challenger Ashley Judd, including the possibility of leveraging her “emotionally unbalanced” mental state.

Mother Jones‘ David Corn, who obtained secret audio of the Feb. 2 meeting, said that “McConnell and his aides considered assaulting Judd for her past struggles with depression and for her religious views.”

“She’s clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced,” the meeting leader says in one audio clip. “Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she’s suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the ’90s.”

In another clip, the meeting leader said that Judd was critical of “traditional Christianity” because it was a “vestige of patriarchy.”

He explained: “She says Christianity gives a God like a man, presented and discussed exclusively with male imagery, which legitimizes and seals male power, the intention to dominate even if that intention is nowhere visible.”

“I think too she’s clearly sort of anti-sort-of-traditional American family,” he added. “She described having children as selfish, and she thinks it’s unconscionable to breed.”

Last month, Judd announced that she would not run against McConnell for Kentucky’s Senate seat.

In 2006, the actress told Glamour that she had spent 47 days in a treatment facility in Texas for “codependence in my relationships; depression; blaming, raging, numbing, denying and minimizing my feelings.”

“I needed help,” Judd said. “I was in so much pain.”

She described a childhood of “complete and total chaos that was “in such a state of disarray and dysfunction that I became a hypervigilant child, doing the best I could to raise myself under extraordinarily unpredictable and unsafe circumstances.”

At a appearance in Washington, D.C. last month, Judd spoke about being a three-time rape survivor.

“I’m a three-time survivor of rape, and about that I have no shame, because it was never my shame to begin with—it was the perpetrator’s shame,” she said. “And only when I was a grown empowered adult and had healthy boundaries and had the opportunity to do helpful work on that trauma was I able to say, okay, that perpetrator was shameless, and put their shame on me. Now I gave that shame back, and it’s my job to break my isolation and talk with other girls and other women.”

Update (11:00 a.m. ET): The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reportedly been asked to investigate the audio tapes published by Mother Jones on Tuesday.

McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton told CNN that “we’ve always said the Left will stop at nothing to attack Sen. McConnell, but Watergate-style tactics to bug campaign headquarters is above and beyond.”

Update (2:30 p.m. ET): Mother Jones told Politico that the audio tape was not the result of a Watergate-style bugging operation.

Update (4:00 p.m. ET): In a statement provided to MSNBC, Judd said that the possibility the her mental health would be attacked in a campaign was “another example of the politics of personal destruction that embody Mitch McConnell and are pervasive in Washington, D.C.”

Listen to these audio clips, uploaded April 9, 2013.

Democrats watch in awe as McConnell filibusters himself

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced legislation to raise the debt ceiling on Thursday, apparently with the intent of showing that even Democrats would not support such a bill.

However, McConnell’s plan backfired after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called for a vote on the legislation, which would have given the president the authority to raise the federal debt ceiling on his own. The top Senate Republican was forced to filibuster his own bill.

“What we have here is a case of Republicans here in the Senate once again not taking ‘yes’ for an answer,” Reid said, after McConnell announced his filibuster. “This morning the Republican leader asked consent to have a vote on this proposal, just now I told everyone we were willing to have that vote — up or down vote. Now the Republican leader objects to his own idea. So I guess we have a filibuster of his own bill, so I object.”

Apparently aware the incident would bring media attention, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) expressed astonishment at McConnell’s legislative antics.

“What just transpired deserves a word,” he remarked. “Sen. McConnell came to the floor this morning and offered a change in law that would help us avoid the kind of obstruction and the kind of show downs we’ve had in the past over the debt ceiling.”

Durbin explained “to those who don’t follow the Senate” that by calling for the legislation to be passed by a 60-vote majority, McConnell had filibustered the bill. He said this was probably the first time in history that a senator had filibuster his own proposal.

Reid and other Democrats have called for the Senate’s filibuster rules to be reformed, claiming that Republicans have abused the parliamentary procedure and obstructed lawmaking.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:

Bad Economy? Blame It on Mitch McConnell and the GOP

by Michael Tomasky/The Daily Beast

In the realm of political strategy, there are two mindsets on the question of attacking the opponent. One frets excessively about how the opponent will respond and how the media will write it up. The other, more aggressive mindset doesn’t worry too much about those things, on the principle that playing offense is almost always better than playing defense. I raise this with respect to the specific question of whether President Obama is going to make attacks on Republican obstructionism part of his arsenal over the next two months. His advisors seem to think that doing so would make Obama look weak. I emphatically disagree, and I think he’ll be dragged into doing it anyway, as he already was. Let’s review the tape.

President Obama takes the stage during a campaign rally at the University of Iowa in September. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

On Wednesday night, Bill Clinton ripped into the congressional GOP: “[Obama] also tried to work with Congressional Republicans on health care, debt reduction, and jobs, but that didn’t work out so well. Probably because, as the Senate Republican leader, in a remarkable moment of candor, said two years before the election, their No. 1 priority was not to put America back to work, but to put President Obama out of work. Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we’re going to keep President Obama on the job!” It was then that he delivered that line about the GOP’s message in Tampa: we made the mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so put us back in.

I was elated to hear that obstructionism had made it to the convention podium, and from its best and most authoritative speaker no less. I hoped this meant that it would become a theme. Let me pause in the chronology to say why. It’s simple. The vast majority of the people blame the president for the sputtering economy. After all, he’s the president. They elected him to fix things, so dammit, fix things. Most people’s political analysis doesn’t go beyond this. They think the president can just ... do stuff.

Sometimes, the president can. It is certainly true that Obama had a little more than a year, from Al Franken’s swearing in in July 2009 (which gave the Democrats the magic 60 Senate seats) until September 2010 (when Congress recessed to hit the campaign trail) when he should have been able to do stuff. He did health care. But he, and they, didn’t do economy. The idea of stimulus had been so soiled by then that they didn’t have the votes even among Democrats—partly, to be sure, their own fault for mishandling the stimulus argument the first time around.

But for most of his term, especially on the economy, the Republicans blocked everything. Most people don’t understand that 41 votes in the Senate equal an effective majority because of their collective power to stop any action in its tracks, and most people never will. But the fact is that those 41, if they link arms and stand firm, have more power than the president. Indeed: That old chestnut “the president proposes, and Congress disposes” was originally appropriated from the age-old apothegm “man proposeth, but God disposeth.” Congress is God. At least on domestic policy. But try to tell an average American that in the age of the imperial presidency.

Back to the chronology. As I said, I expected to hear Biden and Obama pick up on Clinton’s attack. Neither did, at least in any meaningful way. Obama didn’t mention, for example, his 2011 jobs bill. Ezra Klein wrote yesterday that the Obama team appears to have decided “to refrain from reminding voters how bad things are and to resist using the campaign as an opportunity to continue pushing emergency measures that congressional Republicans implacably oppose.”

Well, I disagree, but OK, if that’s your decision, that’s your decision. But then, the day after the convention, after the poor jobs numbers came out, what did Obama talk about in New Hampshire? GOP opposition to his jobs bill! So which strategy is it?

Most people don’t understand that 41 votes in the Senate equal an effective majority.

Obama may not want to remind voters how bad things are, but they don’t need reminding. They know. And given that they know, the smart and aggressive thing to do is to call out the people who’ve been blocking attempts at progress. Reality is going to force him to do it anyway.

One of the Democrats’ biggest strategic mistakes of the last two years has been their unwillingness to say plainly and openly that Republicans don’t want to see jobs created as long as Obama is president. Chuck Schumer tried it a couple of summers ago. Other Democrats were just afraid to go there. The White House too. And this was even after Mitch McConnell more or less admitted it in public! It was a classic case of worrying about the how opposition would respond and how the media would cover it instead of just playing offense.

Others say he should just train his sights on Mitt Romney, but I think it’s much stronger to tie them all together. Paul Ryan’s presence on the ticket, and Romney’s endorsement of Ryan’s budget, places these slippery fish in the same malodorous kettle. And finally, there is value in simply being seen as fighting. Imagine if Obama called out Mitch McConnell personally for that infamous comment of his. The base would be in heaven, and voters in the middle would at least see him standing up for himself, not letting himself get kicked around. Yes, it would be incautious. I submit that the time is right for a little incaution.

McConnell Can’t Answer How GOP Will Insure Americans After Repealing ObamaCare: ‘That Is Not The Issue’

Our healthcare plan is allow
insurance companies to deny you care.

By Ben Armbruster/Think Progress


Since the Supreme Court last week upheld the Affordable Care Act, Republicans have been scrambling for a response. Without much to say now that the law has been ruled constitutional, the GOP has fallen back on its pledge to repeal ObamaCare. However, the new health care law provides 30 million Americans with access to health insurance. So how do Republicans plan to replace this key feature if they repeal?

Fox News’s Chris Wallace asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) this important question on Fox News Sunday today and the senior senator from Kentucky had no answer. After McConnell meandered through the typical GOP talking points that they plan to allow the sale of health insurance across state lines and that they will institute medical malpractice reform, he finally settled on an answer: Insuring Americans “is not the issue”:

WALLACE: One of the keys to ObamaCare is that it will extend insurance access to 30 million people who are now uninsured. In your replacement, how would you provide universal coverage?

MCCONNELL: Well first let me say the first single thing we can do for the American system is get rid of ObamaCare. … The single biggest direction we can take in terms of improving health care is to get rid of this monstrosity. [...]

WALLACE: But you’re talking about repealing and replace, how would you provide universal coverage?

MCCONNELL: I’ll get to it in a minute. [...]

WALLACE: I just want to ask, what specifically are you going to do to provide universal coverage to the 30 million people who are uninsured?

MCCONNELL: That is not the issue. The question is, how can you go step by step to improve the American health care system. … We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a Western European system.

Watch the clip:

If Republicans are successful in repealing ObamaCare, they’ll also have to answer how they’ll provide coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, lower-income Americans, and even the millions of young Americans who can now stay on their parents’ health care plans until age 26.

GOP Front Group Suggests WWII Vets Fought To Protect Unlimited Secret Money In Elections

Not only I get money but right wing billionaires
give me fresh lettuce and drinking water.

By Josh Israel/Think Progress


The American Future Fund (AFF), a shadowy right-wing attack ad group that does not identify its donors, was responsible for one of the most racially offensive ads of the 2010 cycle. But its latest online ad, “Thank You Senator McConnell,” may be one of the 2012 cycle’s most ridiculous.

The 80-second spot features images of the nation’s Founding Fathers, American troops on D-Day, anti-government protesters wielding “Don’t Tread On Me” flags, and a clip of Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) recent speech blasting calls for disclosure and limits to unfettered corporate political spending — all while text on the screen suggests American veterans fought for corporations’ right to buy and sell elections:

Heroes fought and died four our rights. Among them, the right to speak freely. It’s what makes us American. And our president swore to uphold it. But now, the First Amendment is under attack. By our own President.

Watch the spot:

Despite attempts by McConnell and his allies at AFF to make the issue about free speech, it is not. Prior to the Supreme Court’s election buying decision in Citizens United, no corporate CEO was prevented from saying anything he or she wished about political candidates and issues, as loudly and as often as he or she wished. This ruling was about whether CEOs and other corporate leaders could use unlimited pools of money from their corporate treasury to drown out the speech of everyone else.

Moreover, given that polling indicates more Americans believe in witchcraft than agree withCitizens United, it seems unlikely that the troops storming Normandy were doing so to protect the right of giant corporations to buy elections for sympathetic politicians.

Mitch McConnell & The Chamber of Commerce Tell The Supreme Court To Double Down On Citizens United

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

The Supreme Court is currently considering whether to hear a case that will enable it tocorrect its error in Citizens United and overrule its indefensible decision to allow unlimited corporate and other wealthy donor money to influence elections. Neither the corporate lobby nor the Senate’s top Republican are eager to see this occur, however. Both of them filed briefs in the Supreme Court yesterday urging the justices to not only reaffirm Citizens United, but to do so without even hearing argument in the case.

Neither one of these briefs are surprising. The Chamber is one of the nation’s biggest spenderson elections, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has long been an opponent of campaign finance regulation. Before President Bush appointed Justice Alito, who became the fifth vote to tear down much of America’s checks on big money in politics, the seminal case upholding America’s ability to defend against such money was McConnell v. FEC. In that case, Sen. McConnell was the lead plaintiff who sued — mostly unsuccessfully — to toss out the McCain/Feingold campaign finance law.

Yet while the briefs are unsurprising, they demonstrate both the corporate lobby and the Republican Party’s commitment to keeping wealthy interest groups’ ability to buy and sell elections intact.

McConnell Breaks With House GOP, Agrees To Uphold Last Year’s Debt Deal

By Travis Waldron/THink Progress

House Republican leadership, under pressure from more conservative members of their caucus, last month reneged on the August debt deal and announced that they would cut more spending than was agreed to in the Budget Control Act that raised the debt ceiling. Senate Democrats were incensed, telling the GOP that its plan risked a government shutdown, and President Obama this week warned he wouldn’t sign any new appropriations bills until the House abandoned the lower spending levels.

In his first opportunity to weigh in on the battle, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) yesterday sided with Obama and the Senate Democrats. Led by McConnell, all but two Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to uphold the August debt deal, The Hill reports:

The committee met to divide up the $1.047 trillion allocated to discretionary spending under the debt deal — $19 billion more than allowed under the House-passed budget that Boehner supported. [...]

[McConnell] was joined by most of the Republicans on the committee and all Democrats in advancing the spending levels to be used to construct the 12 annual appropriations bills.

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) voted against the allocations.

House Republicans have attempted to walk back other terms of the deal as well, refusing to include agreed-upon defense cuts in their budget. Instead, they’ve pushed even deeper cutsthan were already required for food stamps, education assistance, and other programs, targeting those programs that help the poor and middle class for a majority of their spending reductions.

Even as he sided with Senate Democrats on current spending levels, McConnell attempted to salve House Republicans. According to The Hill, McConnell’s office noted that “has said the Budget Control Act numbers are just ceilings, not floors, and he would work to cut spending going forward.”

McConnell Claims New Agency Would ‘Bring Down The Banking System’ By Protecting Consumers

By Pat Garofalo/Think Progress

Last week, Senate Republicans filibustered the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The GOP’s plan to justify their filibuster seems to be portraying the CFPB director as a “czar” — a favorite way for Republicans to deride federal officials they don’t like — and falsely claiming that the position has some obscene amount of power.

For instance, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) last week said that the CFPB director would be akin to an “almighty god” with no oversight. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) continued this narrative yesterday during an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: What’s your problem with an agency that would protect consumers from mortgage lenders, from debt collectors and student lenders?

MCCONNELL: Yes, here’s the problem: this new agency answers to no one, absolutely no one — another unelected czar. We’ve got a bunch of those in the White House. We don’t need any more of them. And the only way we can incentivize the administration to change this agency which isn’t subject to oversight by Congress, doesn’t get its money from Congress, answers to literally to no one — it’s one individual who could bring down the banking system in this country if he chose to, has unlimited power. No one has that kind of power.

Watch it:

The GOP may have decided this is a clever line of attack, but that doesn’t make it any more true. For starters, the CFPB was created by an act of Congress, which mandated that the agency have a director. By McConnell’s logic, the head of every cabinet or regulatory agency is “another unelected czar.”

Moreover, it’s simply a lie to say that the CFPB director has unlimited power and is subject to no oversight. As we explained last week, the CFPB, unlike any of the other federal financial system regulators, can have it’s rules struck down by a vote of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a panel composed of the heads of the bank regulatory agencies, the Treasury Secretary, and the Federal Reserve Chairman. No other financial regulator is subject to this sort of check. Theoretically, the FSOC could veto each and every rule that the CFPB makes.

Finally, McConnell has a dim view of the banks in this country if he believes that consumer protection rules would bring the whole banking system down. Implicit in that argument is the belief that banks must rip people off in order to make a profit. McConnell’s rhetoric leads to the conclusion that the GOP not only believes banks must hose consumers to survive, but that Republicans are only too happy to help the banks achieve that end.

Palin Decides She Doesn’t Like McConnell Plan, Immediately Invents A Reason For Why It Is Unconstitutional

By Ian Millhiser/think progress

Earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proposed an odd way to end the debt ceiling crisis: Republicans will stop holding the economy hostage and effectively allow the debt ceiling to be raised without requiring any budget cuts, if Obama gives them 12 opportunities to bash his fiscal policies.

McConnell’s plan to accept political theater as an alternative to drowning the federal government in a bathtub does not please the far right, so they’ve once again fabricated anutterly nonsensical argument why something they don’t like is unconstitutional. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) laid out this argument last night on Fox News:

We will not hand over more power, which I think is unconstitutional, to President Obama to further manipulate our economy. You know, Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution spells out that Congress has the power of the purse strings, so this plan of McConnell’s I think makes no sense because it does cede power to our president and takes away that authority that is inherent in Congress to control the economic decisions that have to be made when it comes to debt.

Watch it:

Here we go again. When President Obama signed a health care law they don’t like, the far right immediately invented an utterly meritless constitutional argument against it. They don’t just support the House GOP’s plan to phase out Medicare, they embrace an absurd claim thatMedicare violates the Constitution. If a waiter brings these people a steak that is slightly overcooked, they demand that he take it back because it’s unconstitutional.

So it’s pretty obvious that Palin’s kneejerk attack on the McConnell plan is wholly without merit. First of all, the debt ceiling fight has absolutely nothing to do with whether Congress retains the “power of the purse strings.” Congress exercises this power by passing appropriation bills that authorize the executive branch to spend money, and President Obama is still forbidden from spending money in excess of a congressional appropriation regardless of whether or not we have a debt ceiling.

Similarly, there is absolutely nothing radical about Congress delegating authority to the executive branch. The power to delegate authority is one of Congress’ most well established powers, and it is the reason why federal agencies are allowed to both write regulations and administer funds. Without this power, a functioning federal government cannot exist.

There is no modern Supreme Court case striking down this kind of delegation of power from the legislature to the executive, and the Supreme Court permits such delegations so long as “Congress clearly delineates the general policy, the public agency which is to apply it, and theboundaries of this delegated authority.” McConnell’s plan easily meets this test, it designates the president as the sole authority possessing the delegated authority. It allows him to raise the debt ceiling only in designated intervals and only if he proposes very specific spending cuts, and it places very strict limits on this authority. Because the president is forbidden to spend money in excess of a congressional appropriation, Obama’s delegated power to raise the debt ceiling would be limited by the amount of congressional appropriations.

But, of course, Palin is no more concerned with what the Constitution actually says than are her many conservative allies who claim that child labor laws, Pell Grants, federal student loans, theban on whites-only lunch counters, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. Why bother to actually read the Constitution when you can just pretend that it says whatever you want?