This editorial will appear in Wednesday’s print edition.

Every time House Speaker John Boehner walked into a room to talk debt limits with Barack Obama, he was followed by an invisible crowd with cocked hats and manic smiles.

The tea pot brigade.

“Just between us,” Boehner could say, “I know it makes sense to include some new revenue in the deal. But I’ve got these crazy members who wouldn’t want the richest man in American to kick in an extra dime toward a balanced budget.

“You don’t know what it’s like caucusing with these nuts. There’s no dealing with them. Hell, some of them would squeeze me out of leadership in a heartbeat if they could, and then who would you be dealing with?

“Some of them really would let America go into default rather than raise taxes. And there’s even crazier guys back in their home districts talking about running against them if they cut me any slack.

“I’d love to play ball with you, Mr. President, but that’s the world I have to live in.” Read more »

This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

Tuesday’s rout of congressional Democrats sent some strong messages, especially to President Obama. But the triumphant Republicans should be cautious about claiming a sweeping partisan mandate.

For Obama, the politically catastrophic loss of more than 60 Democrats in House seats was a whack on the head with a two-by-four. There is no way to pretty up those returns: On the whole, Americans are thoroughly fed up with the Democrats’ stewardship of the White House and both House and Senate.

Americans didn’t reflexively vote against all incumbents. They kept Republican incumbents and picked off Democrats, including senior lawmakers in what seemed like safe seats. The elections saw a surge in self-identified conservatives, who have always outnumbered liberals in this country and now appear to have widened that advantage.

Many fiscal conservatives and suspicious populists were alarmed by the federal government’s bailout loans to major banks, General Motors and Chrysler; by the huge and expensive stimulus bill of 2009, and by this year’s health care reform package.

The price tag – many hundreds of billions of dollars – made these bills easy targets.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

This is one of those “throw the bums out” years. But the South Sound’s three U.S. representatives aren’t bums, and it would be dumb to throw them out.

In fact, the region could lose much of its influence in Congress if Norm Dicks of the 6th Congressional District, Dave Reichert of the 8th and Adam Smith of the 9th lost their jobs.

In terms of raw clout, Dicks is the mightiest of the three – one of the mightiest in the country, for that matter. His 34 years in the House and parliamentary skills have landed him in positions of enormous power in the House Appropriations Committee: chairman of the defense subcommittee and vice-chair of the interior subcommittee.

As such, he has helped secure Washington’s share of the federal budget, steering countless appropriations toward the state and the 6th District, which covers the Olympic Peninsula, University Place and parts of Tacoma and Lakewood. Federal funding of the cleanup of Puget Sound, for example, has multiplied many times over on his watch. Dicks is also one of Congress’ leading authorities on defense and military policy, which makes him an ideal advocate for Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.
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Concern about the war in Afghanistan isn’t news, but it’s noteworthy coming from U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks. A major power in Congress, Dicks is one of the nation’s chief makers of defense policy and has a strong grip on the military’s purse strings.

As chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, he’s well briefed on the war and visited Afghanistan twice this year.

Visiting us today, he described the war as “a big question mark” – tougher than Iraq, in part because “79 percent of the people are illiterate,” heroin production is widespread and “corruption keeps getting worse.”

“There’s …

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This editorial will appear in Friday’s print edition.

Now Congress decides to develop a conscience.

Battered by election-year debate over out-of-control federal spending, D.C. lawmakers are trying to look fiscally prudent by canceling plans for $23 billion in state aid.

Their supposed show of resolve is cursed by bad timing and bad aim.

More than 30 states had counted on that money to help balance budgets, many that begin July 1. The president and both chambers of Congress had signaled the money would be there.

Then last week, the House stripped the aid – which flows to states in the form of bigger Medicaid matches – from its jobs bill. The Senate could follow as early as next week.

If that happens, Congress would indeed be putting its foot down – right on top of states’ ability to shelter social services and higher education from even more draconian cuts.

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This editorial will appear in Thursday’s print edition.

Arizona’s new attempt to crack down on illegal immigration is nasty, brutish and probably unconstitutional. It’s also understandable.

The state’s week-old law makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally and directs police to question suspected aliens about their immigration status. It’s hard to see how this law could possibly be enforced without harassing American citizens with brown skin and Spanish surnames – some of whose families were living in Arizona long before statehood.

From this northern latitude, the policy looks incomprehensibly extreme and harsh. It’s more comprehensible when seen as an angry reaction to Congress’ shameful refusal to do something serious about illegal immigration.

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday’s print edition.

The annual tussle over ensuring tax equity for Washington and six other states might make great sport if it weren’t so predictable.

The sales tax deduction is a favorite bargaining chip in Congress, and consequently, it’s in perpetual peril.

The deduction has been added to – and dropped from – controversial legislation dealing with everything from raising the minimum wage to offering tax incentives for renewable energy.
This year’s vehicle of choice seemed to be the jobs bill. The House version passed in December included the deduction, as well as a number of other tax breaks. Read more »

This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

Meet the post-Massachusetts Obama.

In his State of the Union address Wednesday night, the president was all bipartisanship, all political unity, all transcendent American values. All because a single Republican candidate in Massachusetts has punched a hole in what had been an airtight, filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate.

The address was front-loaded with Obama’s concern for “men and women who wake up with the anguish of not knowing where their next paycheck will come from” and a call for the Senate to approve a job-creation bill that has cleared the House of Representatives.

Despite the optimistic tone, Obama’s report of retirement funds that have “started” to regain “some of their value,” and of businesses “beginning to invest again” and “starting to hire again” didn’t sound like vote of a confidence in imminent economic recovery.

Persistent financial pain is one of the forces that put Scott Brown over the top last week; Obama well understands that it could cripple his administration come November if his party isn’t at least perceived as easing the anguish.
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