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Vice President Mike Pence began Memorial Day activities by thanking a group that raises funds for wounded veterans.

The group, called Project Hero, raises money for physical and mental rehabilitation for wounded veterans and first responders. The group of bicyclists began its ride to Virginia Beach, Va., at the Pence's home in Washington.

"We are incredibly honored to host project hero back at the home of the Vice President," Pence told the roughly 70 to 80 cyclists, according to a pool report. "This is a day we remember those who served and did not come home. ... To be able to welcome you here on this most hallowed of days is profoundly humbling to Karen and I."

After touting the benefits of President Trump's executive order on veterans healthcare, Pence wished the riders luck.

"We wish you Godspeed, safe travels all the way to Virginia Beach and for Project Hero and all of those that it helps all the way to a full recovery in an America that cherishes all those who serve," Pence said.

This is the 10th ride for the group, which does this annually, and the fourth year in a row it has begun at the vice president's house.

The Pences, along with Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, were presented with Project Hero jerseys.

"That'll give me a year to fit into it," Pence joked, according to the pool report.

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Mike Pence thanks bike riders who raise money for wounded vets - Washington Examiner

New York Times

Do We Really Want Mike Pence to Be President? New York Times The remarkable thing about Vice President Mike Pence is that he is not remarkable at all. That's one of the first things I learned last December when I arrived in Indiana to report on let's face it the next president of the United States. The man ... Pence left dozens of records requests unfilledUSA TODAY There are many reasons to oppose a Mike Pence presidencybut his skill at lying is the biggestQuartz VP Mike Pence tells Naval Academy graduates President Trump 'has their back'CapitalGazette.com Breitbart News -TIME all 108 news articles »

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Do We Really Want Mike Pence to Be President? - New York Times

Follow the chain of command without exception. Submit yourselves, as the saying goes, to the authorities that have been placed above you. Trust your superiors, trust your orders, and youll serve and lead well.

That was one of Vice President Mike Pences exhortations to the 2017 graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy last Friday. Now, we might debate the wisdom of this advice. After all,those officers willserve under a Commander-in-Chief who, as a presidential candidate, talked openly of giving military orders that many experts said would be illegal.

But this is a blog on Christianity and history, not law. As a Christian and a historian, I was most interested in the middle sentence from the paragraph quoted above.Why should these officers adopt Pences idea oforientation to authority? Because, as the saying goes, they should submit to the authorities placed over them.

As most of you already know, thesaying is actually scripture. Not a direct quotation, but Pences paraphrase of one or two passages from the New Testament:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Rom 13:1-2, NRSV)

Submit yourselves for the Lords sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. (1 Pet 2:13-14, NIV)

As I wrote at my own blog, Im not sure we should act as if the New Testament has any kind of authority over the religiously plural officer corps that protects a democratic republic that separates church and state. But Pence is hardly the first prominent American to make such public use of these Christian scriptures though what they mean has been hotly contested since even before the Republic won its independence.

For example, those verses appear multiple times in Mark Nolls In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783. Let me note just three such instances:

In his 1744 pamphlet on The Essential Rights and Properties of Protestants, clergyman-legislator Elisha Williams called Romans 13:1 a text often wrecked and tortured by such wits as were disposed to serve the designs of arbitrary power. He insisted that the [civil and religious authorities] power is a limited one; and therefore the obedience is a limited obedience. For Williams, Pauls admonition to the Romans had to be read in conversation with New Testament texts on individual freedom (e.g., Matt 23:8, 2 Cor 3:17).

Likewise, the Unitarian preacher Jonathan Mayhew marked the 100th anniversary of the execution of Charles I by preaching a lengthy expository sermon to argue that the thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans did not require colonists to passively obey the dictates of Parliament.

But in 1780, the New York clergyman Charles Inglis appealed to Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 (among other texts) in a sermon reversing Mayhews judgments. Later the first Anglican bishop of Nova Scotia (where many Loyalists fled in 1783), Inglis could scarcely believe that Bible-believing Christians could supportthe American Revolution:

But that professing Christians, who really believe in a divine Revelation, and acknowledge its Authoritythat they should be the Dupes of such Menthat they should make no Conscience of dishonouring the King, and rebelling against himthat they should knowingly trample on the Law of God, and act as if no such Law existedthat instead of obeying this Law, they should be Trumpeters of Sedition and Rebellion: This is astonishing indeed.

But instead of avoiding Romans 13 and I Peter 2, noted Tommy Kidd in a 2014 Anxious Benchpost,Patriot pastors (to their credit) took them on frequently and directly. They usually replied to Loyalist critics that the command to submit was never unconditional just as it is not unconditional in marriage, in church, or in any other social setting.

Moving into the 19th and early 20th centuries I was also curious to see how such texts figured in Lincoln Mullens Americas Public Bible project (introduced here by John), which indexes over 866,000 biblical quotations from newspapers published between 1837 and 1922 and digitized by the Library of Congress as Chronicling America. (That collection now ranges from 1789 to 1924.) 1 Peter 2:13-14 did not occur often enough to be includedin Americas Public Bible, but heres a chart of the frequency for Romans 13:1 and 2:

Used by permission of Lincoln Mullen

Though not unusual, neither verse cracks Lincolns top 10 decade lists. Even at its peak of popularity in the early 1840s, Romans 13:2 still appears only half as often as the single most popular verse for that time period (Luke 18:16, which generally is 5-20 times as common in the corpus as the two verses from Romans 13).

Not surprisingly, when Romans 13 did enter American public discourseat this time, it was usually as part of the national debate over slavery. In 1839, for example, a Congregationalist minister named William Mitchell quoted that passagein support of his argument that Civil government, however corrupt, is an institution of God. Orson S. Murray, the abolitionist editorof The Vermont Telegraph, was appalled:

No matter then how corrupt the governmentfrom the corrupt, hypocritical republic that establishes by law and holds in existence a most abhorrent and diabolical system of robbery, and lust, and murder, down through all the grades of aristocracy and monarchy, originating in, or originatingas a large proportion of them dopopery, Mahomedanism, and idolatry, in all their degrading, dehumanizing, man-destroying, God-dishonoring formsall, all these corrupt and corrupting institutions are the workmanship of an all-wise, and holy, and just God!!! The consummate absurditynot to say the involved shocking impiety and blasphemyof deliberately and intelligently holding to such sentiments, lies out on the face of the declaration. To expose them, it needs no argument or comment. I would not be understood as denouncing, outright, friend Mitchell, as a blasphemer. I am altogether willing to attribute the monstrous heresy to blindness of mindthe habit of taking upon trust long received opinionsrather than to perverseness of heart.

1851 poster Wikimedia/public domain

But in 1855 the editor of Richmonds Daily Dispatch asked why Northern preachers would advocate strict obedience to a temperance law while disdaining the Fugitive Slave Act:

The human law must accord with the Divine Law in order to render obedience a duty! They do not condescend to inform us who is to be the judge of that accordance. They dare not. Well knowing that the right of private judgment is one of the most valued rights of Protestantism, they are aware that their doctrine translated into plain English amounts to this: that if any and every man in the community chooses to consider any law unscriptural, it is their duty to disobey ita principle which, if carried into practice, would of course lead at once to rebellion and anarchy.

The true doctrine on this subject is set forth in the words of Inspiration itself: Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

Romans 13 continued to appear in American newspapers after the Civil War (e.g., it was one of the texts read at the official service for Pres. James Garfield after his 1881 death), but it virtually disappears from the Chronicling America as the database enters the 20th century. Ive done a bit of digging at the American Rhetoric database and found only one speech that even indirectly alludes to these scriptures: Woodrow Wilson request for a declaration of war on Germany in 1917, in which that Presbyterian elder argued that Americans could fight for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments.

My sense is that Pence is unusual amongAmerican politicians of recent generations in revisitingsuch hotly contested rhetorical territory. Butif youre aware of other late 20th/early 21st century public uses of Romans 13:1-2 or 1 Peter 2:13-14, please share them in the comments section!

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Mike Pence, Orientation to Authority, and Public Uses of Romans 13 - Patheos (blog)

Washington (CNN)Vice President Mike Pence's attempt to peel away House Republicans to support the White House's tax plan spurred a backlash among a critical bloc of conservative lawmakers Wednesday, Hill sources said.

But in a flurry of exchanges Wednesday afternoon, Republican Study Committee members turned on the White House, saying they should not blindly accept whatever President Donald Trump is selling, the sources told CNN.

The drama started with an 11:30 a.m. text Wednesday from Walker to members of the group's leadership, saying that Pence asked him to get RSC members to break with Ryan and support the White House tax plan.

A heated discussion ensued over text, with some RSC members suggesting they should support the President -- and multiple others saying it was their job to be an independent branch of government and saying that they should not abandon House leaders.

As part of the exchange, Walker said he told Pence he would have to talk with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady -- a key architect of the competing House Republican tax plan -- before talking to his membership.

One source who reviewed the text exchange between Walker and the RSC members, said the request from Pence seemed out of the ordinary.

"My eyebrows raised when I saw that text," said the source.

A White House aide said that Pence met with Ryan, Brady and Walker individually at the Capitol this week. The aide said that the meetings were designed for Pence to take the pulse of House Republicans and get an idea of where they could find compromise.

"The vice president was talking to leadership, as well as other members in terms of: 'Where is your membership? Where is leadership? Where are you?'" the White House aide said.

Walker downplayed the request from Pence when asked about it Wednesday.

"I don't know if I would call it an aggressive lobbying process. I think they were concerned, as they should be, about getting some things through the House that they promised on. And I think that's one of them," Walker said.

A Ryan spokeswoman denied there was any friction between House Republicans and the White House.

"House and Senate Republicans, and the White House, are jointly working on a tax reform proposal that we can all coalesce around," said AshLee Strong, a Ryan spokeswoman.

Republicans have established tax reform as the next major piece of their agenda that they would like to get to the President's desk -- but compared to the health care battle, pushing a sweeping tax bill through Congress appears to be a Herculean lift.

Lawmakers and the White House have already split on whether a border adjustment tax -- which would levy a new tax on imports to pay for other tax cuts -- should be included. The border tax is a centerpiece of the plan Ryan has been working on for close to a decade, but the White House has shunned the idea.

Continued here:
First on CNN: Pence tax lobbying sparks Hill backlash - CNN

By Wade Jacoby By Wade Jacoby May 30 at 8:49 AM

On Tuesday morning, President Trump wrote a tweet saying that the United States had a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany. He further said that this was bad for the United States and (in what seemed to be a vague threat against Germany) said that this would change. This follows on Trumps reported statement in a closed-door session with European officials a week ago that German trade policy was bad, very bad. What lies behind Trumps complaints about Germanys trade deficit? Heres what you need to know.

Trump doesnt understand Germanys trade relationships

The Trump administration seems to have some basic misunderstandings of Germanys economic policy. Trumps trade adviser, Peter Navarro, seems to think that Germany wants a weak euro. In fact, German officials have spoken out consistently against the European Central Banks quantitative easing policy that is helping hold down the euros value.

More broadly, the president seems to think of trade in terms of bilateral relationships between pairs of countries that bargain with one another to strike a deal. However, trade relations are much more complex and harder to trace policy changes in one country can lead to indirect ripple effects that are difficult to trace, but very important.

Even if Trumps criticism rests on dubious assumptions, the United States is not the only country worried about Germanys economic policy, and some of the U.S. concerns are both reasonable and long-standing. Germanys large current account surplus is now in its 15th year and exceeds 8 percent of German gross domestic product. However, neither the Trump nor the Obama administrations, nor, for that matter, other European officials, have convinced the Germans that this is a problem, let alone that they need to solve it.

After recent summits, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said May 28 that Europe must take its fate into its own hands. (Reuters)

Germany, too, misunderstands the sources of its own success

As I discuss in a recent paper for the Transatlantic Academy, Germany has responded to such concerns with two complementary rhetorical arguments. First, it says that its large surplus and other countries deficits are a simple product of differences in competitiveness. Second, German officials normalize and apologize. To do this, they start by stressing that Germany is just like any other advanced economy and that any state willing to do the right policy reforms could enjoy its competitive advantages. When they get pushback, they become apologists, articulating and defending Germanys uniqueness and purported inability to change.

A better explanation, however, would move the focus away from competitiveness to capital flows large financial flows between countries that reflect policy-driven changes in incomes, consumption, savings and investment. In Germanys case, a host of labor market, pension, public investment and fiscal policy changes have helped lower the share of national income that goes to labor. This put far more money in the hands of those who save rather than spend. As a result, German domestic consumption has necessarily grown much more slowly than has national income, and lower consumption, by definition, has meant greater savings. Practically, this means firm profits have soared ever higher, and, more recently, government debt has shrunk both manifestations of these higher savings. Overall, German national savings grew from about 21 percent of German GDP to 28 percent during the period in which its current account went sharply into surplus (2003-2017). Meanwhile, German private investment stagnated, and public investment fell to among the lowest levels in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This means that of the three usual sources of economic growth consumption, investment and trade Germany has become disruptively reliant on trade since about 2003.

[Analysis | Thanks to Trump, Germany says it cant rely on the United States. What does that mean?]

Thus, where German apologists claim that the trade surplus is simply the aggregate result of free consumer choices, it is, in fact, mostly the result of Germanys capital outflows, which are a result of policy choices, especially those that shift national income from consumers to firms (as profits or capital subsidies) or to government (as budget surpluses). Global capital flows have their own logic and have now grown to dwarf trade flows.

This has policy implications

Why should it matter to other countries how much Germany saves? The answer is that national savings dont just sit in banks. They often have large unanticipated knock-on effects elsewhere. It is an economic truism to say that global savings and investment must equal each other by definition. This means that savings increases in one place logically must be matched either with investment growth (there or somewhere else) or by savings declines somewhere else.

Broadly speaking, Germany is one of a number of countries, including China, Japan and South Korea, that are now saving far more than they are either consuming or investing (a countrys GDP is the sum of its consumption and investment. Because all GDP is income for the nations residents, another way to put this is that GDP is the sum of consumption and savings the two things people can do with their income). This alone is complicated enough to make most elected officials heads hurt.

But it gets worse. What happens to those extra savings (e.g., in excess of the nations total investment)? According to macroeconomic theory and data, these savings are going to any country with a trade deficit. Indeed, another way to understand a countrys trade surplus is that it is (and must be) exactly equal in size to its investment deficit.

The academic literature on capital flows emphasizes the importance of this relationship and spells out its counterintuitive and often unwelcome results. For example, it is difficult for countries to deal with unwanted capital inflows when their current investment needs are largely covered, as is true in the United States today. Because savings must, again by definition, match investment, those inflows that arent invested must generate lower savings in the receiving country. Put differently, countries dont simply get to choose their own savings rates because these are profoundly affected by the presence of foreign capital.

Thus, countries that persistently save more than they invest even if for sensible reasons such as the aging of their society can nevertheless cause trouble for other states. However, free capital flows in the euro zone and in the liberal international order more broadly mean that there are few ways of stopping inflows of capital.

The two main ways that a country like the United States reacts to inflows from Germany, China and elsewhere are through a consumption boom or an increase in unemployment. Both ultimately bring down U.S. savings rates to compensate for inflows. For example, consumption decreases savings by increasing debt, and the boom runs out when no more credit is extended; meanwhile, unemployment also causes savings to shrink because people have to live off past earnings. Unfortunately, however, this can persist for a very long time, especially when fresh supplies of foreign capital arrive every day.

Of course, German capital flows are not the only problem for the United States or countries in Southern Europe but German commentators rarely acknowledge that they are a problem.

There are responses Germany could make

If the German government actually wanted to tackle this problem, there are steps it could take, such as reducing taxes on labor and consumption (Germany, like other E.U. member states, has a value-added tax that hits consumer spending), increase public spending, and either reduce national savings or improve the domestic investment climate for firms. Equally, there are steps that the United States could take, too. But vituperative disagreements about trade miss the point trade relations are dwarfed in importance by capital flows. At some point, the world will be unable to absorb the capital surpluses of Germany, China and others, leading to another painful correction that might undermine the liberal order. As a surplus country, Germany depends on that order, even if it is difficult for German and U.S. politicians to understand that.

Wade Jacoby is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University.

Read more:
Donald Trump just threatened Germany over trade. Here's what you need to know - Washington Post