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House Republicans, already divided on how to handle the federal budget, the debt limit, a rewrite of the tax code and more, have something new to tussle over: their summer vacation.

The decision announced Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to curtail that chambers recess by two weeks from July 28 to Aug. 11 to tackle unfinished business was not immediately embraced by House leaders.

Inside a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Wednesday morning, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) indicated that he intended to keep members around only so long as it might take them to act on the health-care bill pending in the Senate.

The case McCarthy made privately, and later publicly to reporters, was simple: The Senate still might have work to do, but the House has done plenty.

The House has passed its version of the health-care legislation, as well as major bills dismantling the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law, scaling back federal regulatory powers and cracking down on illegal immigration. The chamber is also set to clear the annual military authorization bill by weeks end.

(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

We will continue to do our work here, and we hope the Senate continues to do their work as we move forward, he said, waving a chart showing that 226 bills passed by the House this year await Senate action.

McConnell indicated Tuesday that the Senate needed the extra time to process the defense bill and clear a backlog of executive nominations that the House does not constitutionally act on.

But a handful of House Republicans mostly conservative hard-liners are pressing their leaders to keep working through August to tackle major pieces of unfinished business.

Those include the annual budget resolution, which is a key prerequisite for a tax-revamp bill expected to dominate the falls legislative agenda, as well as a necessary increase in the federal debt ceiling.

If we dont have results, then we shouldnt have a recess, said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.

Weve done some good brush-clearing, but weve got major, major timber left to cut, said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), another Freedom Caucus member.

Folks in the real world that have to go to a job every day dont get to take a vacation if their job doesnt get done, said Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), who is lending support to the Freedom Caucuss anti-recess push.

Their push is being met with sighs and eye rolls from some veteran Republican lawmakers, who have heard plenty of calls to cancel recess over the years typically from the minority party and are not eager to give up time spent with family and constituents without a clear legislative payoff.

If theres a chance of coming up with a work product that we could vote on, that would be worth it, said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), a 32-year House veteran. But if its just being done for optical purposes, it really hurts the families.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters Tuesday that hed prefer members spend their August honing their sales pitch for the tax bill.

Private talks are underway between GOP leaders on Capitol Hill and key White House players to set the parameters for the tax bill, with an eye toward drafting the complex legislation during the August break.

I think August is a perfect opportunity for us to be listening and engaging with our constituents back home and building support for tax reform, Brady said.

And then there is the health-care bill: Several Freedom Caucus members said Wednesday that they could not comprehend leaving Washington for the summer without finishing the bill, even as it languishes in the Senate with no clear path to passage there.

But the most divisive matters inside the GOP concern federal spending the budget, the yearly appropriations bills and the debt limit, which in recent years have been resolved through negotiations with Democrats.

Senate Democrats can still filibuster spending bills and the debt limit, but conservatives are bristling at the prospect of letting Democrats dictate terms when Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House. They say taking action now on the fiscal matters, rather than against fall deadlines, would give the GOP more leverage.

Perhaps no House member has more at stake in the recess debate than Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who is standing in an Aug. 15 special election for the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and would prefer to spend next month on the campaign trail not in Washington.

Brooks, an outspoken Freedom Caucus member, did not join his compatriots at the Wednesday news conference, and he made clear in an interview Tuesday that he did not share their views on the virtues of a working summer.

If there are important votes, Im going to be here, he said, but he added that he didnt see the point of spending the recess working on fiscal bills that are unlikely to be resolved ahead of the relevant deadlines.

I wish it wasnt that way, but historically thats the way its been, and I dont see any kind of session in August that going to change when the bills are passed, Brooks said.

Read more at PowerPost

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Summer vacation is one more thing for House Republicans to fight about - Washington Post

The battle for the future of the Democratic Party is being fought at places like the Nathan Hale Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Huntington Station.

Thats where freshman Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) held a town hall Monday night. Yet despite Suozzis admirable commitment to near-monthly sessions, parked cars overflowed onto the grass, and attendees clamored for question time. Because a number of them were there to push him to support single-payer health care.

Suozzi represents one vision for how Democrats might emerge from the surprising political wilderness where they find themselves in the era of Donald Trump, considering the cascading miscues and enduring Russia scandal engulfing the Republican president. That vision does not include the more progressive dream of creating a single-payer health care system.

Suozzi is a self-described reasonable person, a pragmatic member of the Problem Solvers and Quiet Skies caucuses in the House of Representatives. He opened the forum touting bipartisan relationships hed developed so far in Congress, including joining a bipartisan gym crew.

He says there are issues he wont move on when Republicans come calling, including opposition to the GOP health care plan that looks to leave millions of Americans uninsured. Yet he remains sure that what may be a relatively moderate district would see tax increases or the threat of them as non-starters. Hence, his support of single-payer health care on an academic basis only.

Thats not good enough for members of the grass-roots Long Island Activists and other like-minded attendees, some of whom showed up to demand that Suozzi co-sponsor a House bill making single-payer a reality.

For people like Joseph Sarno of Dix Hills, Democrats need to fall in line for a more progressive platform. He and others implored Suozzi on that front on Monday, as they had in the past. Suozzi addressed one of Long Island Activists founders, Ron Widelec of Commack, by name.

But like much of national politics, the two sides are at an impasse. Should Democrats double down on the seriously progressive initiatives reintroduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, seeing that as the way to combat Democratic apathy? Or is the lesson from the 2016 campaign that Democrats should tailor arguments to a more local tune, edging out wins wherever they can get them even if their ideology is not always perfectly consistent?

Armed with limited information gleaned from special elections and the reading of social media moods, partisans on both sides of the Democratic divide are preparing the way forward for the party into 2018 and beyond. They are weighing whether the losses of national-style Democrats in high-profile, well-funded races mean the party needs to find candidates more amenable to their regions. Or does the win of someone like Christine Pellegrino a Sanders delegate from West Islip with union backing who won a South Shore Assembly seat in a Trump district in a low-turnout race on May 23 imply that progressive ideals are winning?

That was all in the caldron for Suozzi to deal with on Monday. He noted that to change things, you need to win. The activists might add that to win elections, the candidates need to change. There does not appear to be much chance of rapprochement.

But in reality, there is plenty of room between the hard goal of single-payer health care and the moral nightmare of the GOP plan. That middle ground could be something both sides of the Democratic divide could support. Coming to some sort of truce on issues like this when it matters at election time will be the true test of 2018 and after for the party. If either side abandons the other, the wilderness may be unbroken.

Mark Chiusano is a member of Newsdays editorial board.

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Suburban progressives want to push Tom Suozzi and the ... - amNY

While rolling out their plan to extend Californias cap-and-trade program, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders have portrayed their proposal as a win on two fronts: reaching the states ambitious climate goals and tackling local air pollution.

But beyond the triumphant rhetoric, there is ambivalence about the proposal, largely from progressive lawmakers and environmental advocates. Meanwhile, more conservative legislators and industry groups have stopped short of embracing the plan, throwing the swift passage Brown hoped for in doubt.

The reactions to the proposal underscore a key tension in the debate over Californias self-styled role as a national and international climate leader, particularly as President Trump slashes environmental regulations in Washington: How to balance aggressive action with broad political appeal.

The state is responsible for a tiny fraction of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, meaning its only hope of influencing global warming is modeling policies that can be embraced elsewhere, including in more conservative states. Cap and trade, a system that requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases, is seen as a more business-friendly alternative to other methods that would dictate how polluters such as refineries reduce their emissions.

Being able to show that [emissions] reductions can happen, that the economy can continue to thrive with this ambitious climate commitment, that's going to be critical for this model being replicated around the world, said Erica Morehouse, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, a national environmental group that quickly backed Browns plan.

But other green advocates want the state to set an example with the most stringent possible regulations, and blanch at the concessions that oil companies and other industries have extracted from Brown, who has been pressing for a deal before lawmakers break for summer recess July 21.

Brown wanted to declare victory on something and go home, and that's what he's doing unfortunately hes doing so at the expense of our state's climate goals, said R.L. Miller, president of the grassroots group Climate Hawks Vote.

Gov. Brown and Democratic leaders offer plan to extend cap and trade, with aim for approval this week

The climate package, which was unveiled late Monday, received a lukewarm reception among lawmakers across the ideological spectrum Tuesday. Progressive Democrats worried the design of the cap-and-trade system was too friendly to industry. Republicans, whose votes Brown has courted, want tweaks on tax relief for manufacturers and for certain landowners currently paying for fire prevention that was written into the measure. They also want more clarity on how the revenues from the cap-and-trade auctions will be spent.

Brown and his allies want a two-thirds vote to extend cap and trade, the threshold for passing tax increases, to insulate the program from legal challenges. Democrats narrowly hold the necessary supermajorities in each house, but a substantial bloc is aligned with business interests, making it difficult to push a purely progressive measure through the Legislature.

Despite California's reputation as a green leader, environmental groups often struggle to become the driving force in the Capitol, said Fabian Nez, the former Assembly speaker who shepherded landmark legislation on climate change in 2006.

"There's a difference between protest politics and governance," he said. "The environmental community has difficulty transferring from one to the other."

The disappointment among some environmentalists stands in stark contrast to their major victory last year with legislation setting an ambitious target for slashing emissions by 2030. With the goal enshrined in state law, they hoped to have more leverage over industry groups when it came to negotiating the future of the cap-and-trade program.

Brown said the business community was "going to plead" to extend the program to avoid more costly regulations. Browns prediction, in a sense, was borne out: Now, industries that have tried to undermine the program in the past are now seeking its extension, touting it as the most cost-effective way to reach the states goals.

Although clean energy businesses were quick to tout the plan released Monday, other sectors, including oil and agriculture, have so far kept quiet.

Given the magnitude of the importance of this, we only have one shot to get this right, said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable. We support cap and trade, and we are all trying to figure out how we can build a balanced plan we can support that reduces greenhouse gases and grows our economy.

Chris Megerian

There's a lot of ideas out there for changing the cap-and-trade program. Here are the highlights.

There's a lot of ideas out there for changing the cap-and-trade program. Here are the highlights. (Chris Megerian)

The implications of cap and trades future extend beyond Californias borders. Dean Florez, a member of the California Air Resources Board, said the governor needed to make a market-friendly proposal to show China and others considering climate change policies that a large economy could develop a measure that was environmentally sound and allowed for economic growth and flexibility.

If the governor did anything differently with this, he wouldnt have been a credible person on the international stage, Florez said. It would be seen as this wacky proposal.

Industrys hand was strengthened at the beginning of June when oil companies teamed up with powerful building trade unions, which have contracts at refineries, to block climate legislation backed by progressive lawmakers and some environmentalists.

The State Building and Construction Trades Council, the umbrella group for construction unions, said Tuesday it supports Browns plan. Cesar Diaz, the groups legislative director, said the state needs a "balanced approach."

"Our members are working at these refineries," he said, adding that if they started shutting down or scaling back, "our members would suffer."

Besides the split between labor and environmentalists, green groups have also struggled to reach a consensus among themselves. Increasingly ambitious environmental justice advocates, who are focused more on addressing local pollution, are generally opposed to cap and trade, while other more established national organizations back the policy.

Meanwhile, oil companies worked with other industries, such as manufacturers and agriculture interests, to create their own detailed proposals, which aligned in part with the legislation introduced Monday.

Perhaps no issue has caused as much angst with the environmental justice faction as an industry request that would limit state and regional regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. The plan would prohibit air quality regulators from adopting carbon-cutting rules for refineries and other so-called fixed pollution sources that are also subject to cap-and-trade.

A Bay Area Air Quality Management District official criticized that provision as a giveaway to the Western States Petroleum Assn., the industry group that has led the charge against the districts efforts to regulate greenhouse gases from refineries.

That element of the bill is specifically designed to prevent the adoption of progressive, tough air quality regulations by agencies like the Bay Area air district against refineries, said Tom Addison, senior policy advisor for the Bay Area district.

The provision was similarly criticized by environmental justice advocates.

Diane Takvorian, who heads the San Diego County-based Environmental Health Coalition and sits on the state Air Resources Board, called the limitation a direct attack on ARB's proposed refinery reduction measures.

"We just can't tie the hands of our state and local regulatory agencies like this," Takvorian said.

For now, negotiations continue at their wearying pace, as backers strive for a vote by the weeks end. Well into Tuesday evening, the governors office was still hosting meetings with Republicans and other interested parties on the package.

Times staff writer Liam Dillon in Sacramento contributed to this report.

melanie.mason@latimes.com, chris.megerian@latimes.com, tony.barboza@latimes.com

Twitter: @melmason, @chrismegerian, @tonybarboza

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Updates from Sacramento

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Here's why progressives aren't thrilled with Gov. Brown's cap-and-trade plan - Los Angeles Times

Although obviously disillusionment is widespread, there are many important reasons for progressives and popular sectors to support the Maduro government.

In recent weeks, a number of Venezuelan specialists on the left side of the political spectrum have published and posted pieces that place them in an anti-Chavista, ni-ni position that consists of a plague on both your houses with regard to Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition. I consider myself a critical Chavista.

RELATED: We Will Never Give Up: Venezuelas Maduro to Marco Rubio

Its not an easy position to be in, particularly because the last thing I would want to do is to act in any way that would favor the right (that is the Venezuelan opposition and its allies abroad). On the other hand, I have always opposed (even in my writing) the position of some people on the left who feel that U.S. leftists should not publicly express criticisms of socialist governments. Criticism (including public criticism) is necessary as it is part of the process of assimilating lessons. Nevertheless, at this point, I believe there is a conclusive need to support the government in spite of the numerous criticisms that I have (some more profound than others).

The recent articles that harshly attack the Maduro government have been published in Jacobin magazine by Gabriel Hetland and another by Mike Gonzalez as well as Hetlands piece posted by NACLA in which he uses the expression que se vayan todos. More recently NACLA posted an interview with Alejandro Velasco that was originally published by Nueva Sociedad.

I know a number of people both in Venezuela and U.S. academia who I used to see eye to eye on with regard to Chavez and I now find them expressing total rejection of and even animosity toward the government. The only thing that binds us now is our common support for the need to defend Venezuelan sovereignty, and sometimes not even that.

What are the arguments of the ni-ni position that I agree with and what are the ones I disagree with:

Agree:

1. Corruption is an extremely serious problem in Venezuela which the government has not done nearly enough to confront, though some timid measures have been taken (eg. over the last six months in the oil industry).

2. The government has violated certain democratic principles the decision to strip Henrique Capriles of the right to participate in elections on grounds of corruption; and the delay of the gubernatorial elections; but not the decision not to hold the recall in 2016 (since the opposition didnt have their act together on that one).

RELATED: Heres Your Guide to Understanding Protest Deaths in Venezuela

3. The negative role of the state apparatus and the Chavista elite Velasco begins his interview with these words. I agree that the state bureaucracy and Chavista elite have stifled internal Chavista democracy and in doing so have discouraged mobilization.

Nevertheless, I also recognize that this bloc (the Chavista bureaucrats) buttresses the Chavista hold on power as it has a mobilization and organizational capacity that would be lost should Maduro unleash a revolution within the revolution.

Hastily turning power over to the rank and file would have disastrous immediate consequences. Thus, for instance, Chavezs decision to implement the Plan Guayana Socialista with the worker presidents of state companies was a failure, because the labor movement in those companies, almost 100 percent Chavista, went at each other's throats.

4. The Chavista movement has lost a large number of its active supporters. In addition to the factors named by the ni-nis (corruption, government bungling, etc.) there is the factor of "desgaste" (wearing down process over time) which is inevitable and doesnt in itself reflect negatively on the Chavista leadership. Eighteen years is a long time.

Disagree:

1. My most important disagreement at this moment is the statement that the Maduro government is authoritarian or heading in an authoritarian direction. The ni-nis who make this statement never acknowledge the importance of context. They recognize, though in some cases they play down (not so in the case of Hetlands Jacobin piece), the violent activity unleashed by the opposition, but dont relate the states actions to the challenges it is facing.

Just to provide one example. A totally anti-government hostile media encourages the audacity and extremism of the opposition for two reasons. First, the police and National Guard are held back from responding firmly and thus they lose their dissuasive capacity.

And second, the protesters themselves feel empowered. Both factors have a dialectical relationship. In the U.S. or any other country, the corporate media (and some of the alternative media) would be completely sympathetic to the actions of security forces, even their excesses, in a situation of urban paralysis and urban violence over such an extended period of time (its been three and a half months).

Furthermore, to use the term authoritarian when the local media is so supportive of the opposition, is simply fallacious. It is true that the national TV channels (specifically Televen, Venevision, and Globovsion) are less hostile to the government than in 2002-2003 but they (perhaps with the exception of Venevision) are still more pro than anti-opposition. But almost all of the important written media both nationally and locally are vocally anti-government. And in the case of the international media, the bias has no limits.

2. Velasco says the government is not sincere about dialogue there is no evidence one way of the other on this one.

3. The Chavista rank and file has little reason to actively support the Maduro government and for that reason 2 million of them abstained in December 2015.

Although obviously disillusionment is widespread, there are many important reasons for progressives and popular sectors to support the Maduro government: nationalistic foreign policy, rejection of neoliberal type agreements with international financial institutions, social programs that involve community participation; zero-sum-game policies that favor the popular sectors (example: the Bus Rapid Transit, BRT, that in Barcelona-Puerto La Cruz reserves one of two lanes on the main drag connecting the two cities to accordion-type buses at the expense of automobile traffic); and finally Maduro (in spite of all of his shortcomings as an administrator and failure to take necessary bold decisions) has proven to be a fighter and to convince his base that hes not going to go down without a struggle to the end.

RELATED: Abby Martin Busts Open Myths on Venezuela's Food Crisis: 'Shelves Fully Stocked'

He has also attempted to mobilize his base; the failure to attempt to do so by Lula and Dilma Rousseff is a major reason why the impeachment against the latter went through.

4. Venezuelas economic difficulties are not about low oil prices but about government ineptness. There are three causes of the economic crisis and they all have approximately the same weight: low oil prices, the economic war (with Julio Borgess public campaign against multinational investments in Venezuela the existence of an economic war is clearer to see than in the past), and erroneous government policies. With regard to the latter (and here I probably diverge somewhat from Mark Weisbrot), I believe that decisions on economic policies were necessary and urgent, but that there were no easy and obvious choices and anyone that was made would have come with a price both politically and economically.

5. Government intransigence is due to the fact that the Chavista leaders dont want to lose their privileges. This statement is misleading, even while there is undoubtedly an element of truth in it. But the statement assumes that Chavista leaders are all cynics and without any sense of idealism. Where is the scientific evidence to support this statement?

6. Luisa Ortega Diaz represents a neutral position which the Maduro government is unwilling to tolerate. In fact, regardless of her motives, she has assumed an explicitly pro-opposition position. In such a critical situation in which the opposition openly proposes anarchy as a means to unseat Maduro, it makes sense that the Chavistas are attempting to remove her from office.

Steve Ellner has taught economic history at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela since 1977 and also teaches in the Sucre Mission. He is the editor of "Latin Americas Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-First Century" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014).

Excerpt from:
The Venezuelan Dilemma: Progressives and the 'Plague on Both Your Houses' Position - teleSUR English

By Jason Willick By Jason Willick July 12 at 12:21 PM

Jason Willick is a staff writer at The American Interest.

Its anyones guess whether the latest round of Russia revelations will flame out or bring the administration toppling to the ground. But either way, the drama is only one act in an ongoing cycle of outrages involving Trump and Russia that will, one way or another, come to an end. That is not true of the controversy over the Presidents remarks in Warsaw last week, which exposed a crucial contest over ideas that will continue to influence our politics until long after this administration has left office. And the responses from Trumps liberal critics were revealing and dangerous.

The speech a call to arms for a Western civilization ostensibly menaced by decadence and bloat from within and hostile powers from without was received across the center-left as a thinly veiled apologia for white nationalism.Trump did everything but cite Pepe the Frog,tweeted the Atlantics Peter Beinart.Trumps speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto,read a Vox headline. According the New Republics Jeet Heer, Trumps alt-right speechredefined the West in nativist terms.

Thus, the intelligentsia is now flirting with an intellectually indefensible linguistic coup: Characterizing any appeal to the coherence or distinctiveness of Western civilization as evidence of white nationalist sympathies. Such a shift, if accepted, would so expand the scope of the term alt-right that it would lose its meaning. Its genuinely ugly ideas would continue to fester, but we would lose the rhetorical tools to identify and repudiate themas distinct from legitimate admiration for the Western tradition. To use a favorite term of the resistance, the alt-right would become normalized.

[Trumps visit to Poland was a study in breaking norms]

There is no shortage of fair criticism of Trumps speech: For example, that he shouldnt have delivered it in Poland because of Warsaws recent authoritarian tilt; that his criticism of Russia should have been more pointed; or that he would have better served Americas interests by sounding a more Wilsonian tone when it came to promoting democracy around the world. And, yes, Trump has proven himself a clever manipulator of white identity politics during his short political career, so it is understandable that critics would scrutinize his remarks for any hint of bigotry.But by identifying Western civilization itself with white nationalism, the center-left is unwittingly empowering its enemies and imperiling its values.

How did progressive intellectuals get themselves into this mess? The confusion comes in part from loose language: in particular, a conflation of liberalism and the West.Liberalismis an ideology defined by, among other things, freedom of religion, the rule of law, private property, popular sovereignty and equal dignity of all people.The Westis the geographically delimited area where those values were first realized on a large scale during and after the European Enlightenment.

So to appeal to the West in highlighting the importance of liberal values, as Trump did, is not to suggest that those values are the exclusive property of whites or Christians. Rather, it is to accurately recognize that the seeds of these values were forged in the context of the Wests wars, religions and classical inheritances hundreds of years ago. Since then, they have spread far beyond their geographic place of birth and have won tremendous prestige across the world.

What is at stake now is whether Americans will surrender the idea of the West to liberalisms enemies on the alt-right that is, whether we will allow people who deny the equal citizenship of women and minorities and Jews to lay claim to the legacy of Western civilization. This would amount to a major and potentially suicidal concession, because the alt-right not in the opportunistically watered-down sense of immigration skeptic, or social conservative, but in the sense of genuine white male political supremacism is anti-Western. It is hostile to the once-radical ideals of pluralism and self-governance and individual rights that were developed during the Western Enlightenment and its offshoots. It represents an attack on, not a defense of, of the Wests greatest achievements.

[On his trip abroad, Trump left American values behind]

As any alt-rightist will be quick to point out, many Enlightenment philosophers were racist by current standards. (Have you evenreadwhat Voltaire said about the Jews?) But this is a non-sequitur: The Enlightenment is today remembered and celebrated not for the flaws of its principals but for laying the intellectual foundations that have allowed todays conception of liberalism to develop and prosper.

AsDimitri Halikiaspointed out on Twitter, there is a strange convergence between the extreme left and the extreme right when it comes to understanding the West. The campus left (hey, hey, ho, ho,Western Civ has got to go)rejects Western Civilizationbecauseit is racist. The alt-right, meanwhile, accepts Western civilizationonly insofaras it is racist they fashion themselves defenders of the West, but reject the ideas of equality and human dignity that are the Wests principal achievements. But both, crucially, deny the connection between the West and the liberal tradition.

To critics, one of the most offending lines in Trumps speech was his remark that the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Trump clearly intended this to refer to the threat from Islamic extremism and, presumably, the politically correct liberals who he believes are enabling it. But there is another threat to the Wests survival in the form of a far-right politics that would replace liberalism and the rule of law with tribalism and white ethnic patronage.

The best defense we have against this threat is the Western liberal tradition. But by trying to turn the West into a slur, Trumps critics are disarming. Perhaps the presidents dire warning wasnt so exaggerated, after all.

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The alt-right is an attack on Western values. Liberals shouldn't ... - Washington Post