Trump Continues Alienating Congressional Republicans With His Heavy-Handed Manner

Yesterday, Haley Byrd published what many observers in Washington have been noticing, namely that Trump— and his third rate Regime— is screwing up the smooth functioning of the Republican majorities in Congress. Yesterday the imbecile started ranting about and government shutdown and how the Senate should nuke the filibuster entirely. McConnell basically told him to mind his own business and stop interfering in Turtle World. Trump and Bannon have made Ryan’s life a living hell but he’s too scared of Trump to tell him off the way McConnell (a dn even Cornyn) did.

Meanwhile rank-and-file Republicans are starting to complain more frequently and more loudly and many claim that Trump is his own— and his (and their) agenda’s— worst enemy. His clumsy interference is doing more harm than good— much more. “The White House,” wrote Byrd, “consistently has pushed for an unrealistic timeline for the health care bill. Administration officials have ignored whip counts that show the bill doesn't have enough votes to pass, and they expect members to cave to pressure from President Donald Trump. So far, those members haven't relented.”

“The White House needs to let the Congress do its job,” a House Republican staffer said. “So many of our problems are coming from things being rushed.”

Recall that the first attempt to pass the bill failed in March when Trump pressured House Speaker Paul Ryan to hold a vote even though it was clear there wouldn't be enough GOP support for a victory.

The GOP leadership promptly changed course thereafter and took a hands-off approach, leaving members to work out their policy differences. The White House worked through the two-week April recess alongside House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and moderate Tuesday Group co-chair Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) to get a compromise amendment drafted.

That yielded a small but partial victory. The Meadows-led Freedom Caucus then decided to support the bill. Moderates, though, still haven't embraced it, and there still aren't enough votes in the Republican conference to kick it to the Senate.

Nevertheless, the administration tried to push the House to vote early again. Officials tried to move it before the president's 100th day in office in order to tout a symbolic legislative victory. And again, lawmakers didn't bite, wary of these arbitrary deadlines.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) split with the Trump administration on Friday because he thinks the process should slow down, telling IJR:

“I think it's just so complicated, and people wanted to get it done real quickly-- it's OK to want to do that-- but it's just a complicated issue. I think everybody's looking at it right now and saying, 'Really, this is much more difficult than we thought it was going to be.’”

Drawing on some of the president's own realizations, he summed up: “This is too complicated to do in a hurry.”

With members of Congress departing for another recess next week, there is even more renewed pressure to move toward a vote this week.

And it's not just the March of Dimes, AARP and the American Medical Association who are calling TrumpCare a sure catastrophe for the healthcare system. Republicans in districts that aren't ethnically cleansed to make them 20 points red don't like being on the other side from trusted organizations like these. But how about Consumer Reports? In the new issue, there aren't just comparisons between various home improvement tools but a powerful piece entitled How the Affordable Care Act Drove Down Personal Bankruptcy. The warning to congressional Republicans isn't muted:

As legislators and the executive branch renew their efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act this week, they might want to keep in mind a little-known financial consequence of the ACA: Since its adoption, far fewer Americans have taken the extreme step of filing for personal bankruptcy.

Filings have dropped about 50 percent, from 1,536,799 in 2010 to 770,846 in 2016. Those years also represent the time frame when the ACA took effect. Although courts never ask people to declare why they’re filing, many bankruptcy and legal experts agree that medical bills had been a leading cause of personal bankruptcy before public healthcare coverage expanded under the ACA. Unlike other causes of debt, medical bills are often unexpected, involuntary, and large.

...Some of the most important financial protections of the ACA apply to all consumers, whether they get their coverage through ACA exchanges or the private insurance marketplace. These provisions include mandated coverage for pre-existing conditions and, on most covered benefits, an end to annual and lifetime coverage caps. Aspects of the law, including provisions for young people to be covered by a family policy until age 26, went into effect in 2010 and 2011, before the full rollout of the ACA in 2014.

...[I]nsurance is also about peace of mind. And judging from the consumers who have shared their stories with Consumer Reports, that certainty is in short supply as the fate of the ACA is decided. People are wondering what comes next: Repeal? Replace? Improve? Retain and neglect? No one really knows the answer. Americans are concerned about how the future of healthcare will affect them and their families.

Mike Kelly, Elitist Teabagger From Pennsylvania-- A Lump Of Coal

Mike Kelly?

PA-03, the northwest corner of Pennsylvania (Erie, Meadville, New Castle, down to Pittsburgh's northern suburbs) has traditionally been a swing district. When weak, worthless anti-Choice Blue Dog, Kathy Dahlkemper, beat Phil English in 2008. the PVI was R+2. Dahlkemper beat him 52-48% after running up a 14 point lead in mammoth Erie County while Obama was pummelling McCain there 57-41%. The Republican state legislature immediately redistricted, primarily by taking half of Erie County out of the district and tossing it in the deep red GOP wasteland next door (PA-05), where it's voice will be completely diluted and made meaningless. In 2010 Mike Kelly took the hapless Dahlkemper out 111,909 (55.7%) to 88,924 (44.3%) in a set of circumstances that included disillusionment from base Democratic voters with Dahlkemper's short, ugly conservative record. The district went from an R+2 to an R+8, nice and safe for a corrupt Chamber of Commerce/Wall Street/Big Oil shill and religious crackpot like Mike Kelly.

Kelly was born rich and he's one of Congress' wealthiest and most self-entitled elitist multi-millionaires. He took over the family business of selling cheap Korea cars to Americans and has been relentlessly pushing unfair trade deals with Korea that would benefit his own investments, while devastating his own constituents. But his dad's car dealership and his deals with the Koreans aren't the only things that made Kelly so rich. He married an heir to the Phillips Petroleum fortune. Do you think the millions of dollars in natural gas and oil stocks his wife owns has influenced Kelly's approach to his job in Congress? The guy who didn't talk about his Kia and Hyundai dealerships when he was lobbying for the South Korea Free Trade Agreement, has been as dedicated to Big Oil's toxic agenda as any Texas or Oklahoma crooked congressman. Predictably, Kelly is one of the least green Members of Congress

Some people really hate the Chevy Volt, though we suspect few people hate it as much as Chevrolet-Cadillac dealership owner, and freshman Republican Congressman Mike Kelly. After repeatedly going on record declaring that there is “no market” for the Chevy Volt, on the eve of December 30th, the oil-rich Kelly introduced legislation to repeal the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles.

Kelly, who inherited his father’s car dealership in 1995, and married the heiress of the Phillips-Conoco oil company, has introduced legislation repealing the $7,500 tax credit, declaring it wasteful spending. This, despite voting to keep much-more generous subsidies and tax credits for hugely profitable oil companies. Kelly’s reasoning? “We want companies to be profitable.” Opps, looks like he let a little too much truth slip out there!

Then again why would Kelly, who has over $6 million in oil-related assets, want to end these generous subsidies for companies that make him money? How this is not a clear conflict of interest, I do not know, but even Kelly’s own constituents already seem fed up with him, as this video from a July town hall session shows.



In the video above, Kelly talks about poverty and how factories have gone under, yet he seems to have no problem bashing the very people who make the cars he sells. Kelly also tries to deflect the question with a question about pensions and portfolios, before going off on a spiel regarding rich vs. poor, have vs. have-nots, and rather than talk about oil companies he starts talking about GE not paying taxes, and at no point does he answer the actual question.

For a guy who inherited a car dealership, and married an oil heiress, Rep. Mike Kelly certainly has a lot of whining to do about the tax code.

So Saturday, when Boehner let him give the GOP weekly response to President Obama, shouldn't have surprised anyone. Like the horrid Strooge he is, he offered President Obama-- and presumably the American people who elected him twice-- a lump of coal for Christmas. That's what happens when overly rich, white elites get their dander up about a Black person in the White House trying to help ordinary working families. A raging, hysterical enemy of the EPA, Kelly has done all he could to try to gut that agency and he never ceases pushing last century's carbon-based energy sources, which plays conveniently into increasing his own net worth. He is apoplectic that the EPA released new climate regulations on carbon pollution from existing power plants, rules that require dirty plants cut carbon dioxide emission 30% by 2030 from 2005 levels. He says he can't wait to vote for the Keystone XL Pipeline again next year.



This cycle, the DCCC didn't contest Kelly's reelection and he beat Democrat Dan La Vallee, 112,406 (60.5%) to 73,240 (39.5%). With no help from the DCCC, LaVallee raised $408,296 to Kelly's $1,617,901. With born-loser Steve Israel sidelined from the DCCC, will Ben Ray Luján do something different in PA-03?

Mike Kelly (R-PA) Tied to Voter Fraud Arrest, Continued Lack of Leadership And Ethics

Brad Friedman--on the case

Colin Small, 23, of Phoenixville, PA was arrested Thursday night for throwing thousands of Democratic voter registration forms away in a dumpster. He now faces eight felony and five misdemeanor counts related to voter fraud. Republicans are always claiming they're looking for voter fraud-- and they finally found it... in the mirror, as usual. According to the Los Angeles Times, Small was “working as a supervisor as part of a registration operation in eight swing states financed by the Republican National Committee,” run by a company called Strategic Allied Consulting (owned by Romney operative and notorious election fraudster Nathan Sproul).  When questions arose about Strategic’s practices, including allegations of “submitting forged forms and of dumping Democratic registrations” in Palm Beach County, Florida, the RNC fired the company, at which point Small and his team were re-hired by the Republican Party of Virginia. Small’s online LinkedIn resume states that he is employed by the Republican National Committee and previously worked for multimillionaire teabagger Mike Kelly, a loudmouthed, self-entitled avatar of Greed and Selfishness.

While working as an intern for Kelly last year, we can only guess what college student Small learned, or, more to the point, did not learn. Predictably, it seems that his experience in this professional work environment did not instill any notion whatsoever of ethics in him. We already knew that this was the most bitterly partisan and unproductive Congress yet, but now we see the effects that our elected leaders are having on the next generation. Kelly and his like-minded staffers must not have taught Small about honesty, integrity, or the principles of democracy, like equal representation, the right to vote, and the right to free speech.

Kelly is focused on a constituency of one, himself. He has millions tied up in oil and gas stocks, so he works tirelessly to push through pro-fracking legislation to line the special interest lobbyists’ pockets and his own. He owns a car dealership that sells Hyundais and Kias, so, of course he pushed for the South Korea Free Trade Agreement. Small’s online resume claims he helped work on the research for the free trade agreements, that means he was witnessing first-hand the self-enrichment schemes of his boss at the expense of American workers and on American taxpayers’ dime.

The current Republican Party does not have any good policy ideas to offer the American people right now. They do not want to come to the table and negotiate new policies that will benefit our country. Instead, they rely on worn-out and discredited ideas like tax breaks for the “job creators,” which is simply a reworked version of trickle-down economics that never reached the middle class. Knowing that they can’t convince voters with these poor policies, they are trying to cheat the election process by predetermining who can and cannot participate on Election Day.

Again and again, Kelly has remained silent instead of showing the courage and moral fortitude to stand up and speak out against the forces in his party who are steering this country in the wrong direction. He did not speak out against Pennsylvania State Representative Mike Turzai when he “spilled the beans” that Voter ID was merely an opportunity to deliver Pennsylvania for Mitt Romney. He remained silent when local Republicans violated free speech and tore down a Democratic group’s billboard in support of his opponent, Missa Eaton. He was also silent when Rep. Todd Akin made his infamous remarks regarding "legitimate rape." This pattern demonstrates Kelly’s lack of ethical leadership and unwillingness to use his office for democratic and just purposes. It is unfortunate that this behavior is now appearing in the younger generation of the Republican Party, as evidenced by Thursday’s arrest.

The arrest goes much further than Colin Small though. It really is a Republican Party-wide issue. This is the party whose standard bearer, Gov. Mitt Romney, hired a paid consultant named Nathan Sproul, who is an almost universally recognized as a “shady” character. Sproul was recently in the headlines for the voter fraud scandal in Florida, where his company had been hired by the Republican National Committee. It is yet to be determined if Sproul owns the company that hired Small, but both are using similar methods to thwart people’s right to vote. Their tactic is to purposefully misrepresent themselves as a non-affiliated pollsters and ask who the potential registered voter plans to support. If the person answers “Obama,” the employee moves on to the next person. If someone answers, “Romney,” then they are offered a chance to register. This allows the employees to register only Republicans in states like Virginia that do not have voters identify their party preference.

If we fail to elect leaders who are not afraid to debate the real issues, who are not afraid to face the voters-- all of the voters-- then we are going to sink into even pettier politics. We have complex problems that need thoughtful debate and aggressive action. It is clear to me that Mike Kelly is not that kind of person, but Missa Eaton IS that kind of leader. If you'd like to help Missa replace Kelly in Congress and help clean up and reform an institution that really needs clean-up and reform, you can find her on this page supporting Prosperity as opposed to the Austerity (Voodoo) agenda being pushed by Paul Ryan and Mike Kelly.

The Grand Bargain Isn't Shared Sacrifice, It's Human Sacrifice

If you're on the Blue America mailing list, you get an e-mail every week from Digby, John and I, usually about a new candidate or an action Blue America is taking. The only way to get on the list is to donate-- even if just one dollar-- to any one of our candidates on any of our many ActBlue pages, like the standard page for our House candidates or the page for our 3 Senate candidates or one of the more exotic pages, like the one to stop Paul Ryan or for stopping Eric Cantor and for permanently stomping out homophobia in Congress... or for our next awesome contest (which no one knows about but you, since it doesn't officially start 'til next weekend). So a buck to any candidate on any of those sites (or any other Blue America contribution site) and you're on. This week, though I want to share the latest newsletter. Digby wrote it for us and my favorite line is the subject of this post: "The Grand Bargain isn't shared sacrifice, it's human sacrifice."

Last week we alerted you to professor Jacob Hacker's manifesto called Prosperity Economics and asked you to take a look at what could be the blueprint for a progressive approach to our nation's economic problems. We believe this is a plan that can restore growth, reverse inequality and revitalize our democracy. It will even cut the deficit without resorting to slashing vital government services and the already frayed and weakened social insurance programs.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the plan of many of the leadership of the Democratic Party which remains focused on Grand Bargains, "balanced approaches" and Simpson-Bowles, all of which are basically conservative con games devised to slash government at the worst possible time. The Democrats have inexplicably defined victory in these negotiations not as the preservation of vital government programs but winning a nominal tax hike for the wealthiest Americans in exchange for their cooperation in cutting the safety net. Unfortunately for the American people, the Republicans seem to be seeing their winning hand: GOP moneybags David Koch revealed this week that he would be in favor of the tax increases. If his congressional minions follow suit,  the Democrats may get their "victory." Unfortunately, the people will lose, and lose big.

This is why we must have a progressive bloc in Congress that is willing to stand up to both parties in cases like this and be the bulwark against a raid on important government services in the name of austerity. This is why we need our Blue America candidates to be elected this November.

Just as we asked you to look at Prosperity Economics, we asked them too. And the response was remarkable. We asked our candidates to look at them too. You can read them all at this page.

Alan Grayson  had this to say:

"This coming election is too important to be about nothing. And that is why Jacob Hacker and Nate Loewentheil's 'Prosperity Economics' platform is important-- it's not nothing, it's something. Something big. For a Democratic victory to be meaningful, for it to create a 'mandate,' we owe it to America to explain what we would do with that victory. We need to make some promises, and then do our darnedest to try to keep them. 'Prosperity Economics' is a coherent, comprehensive plan that offers the hope-- the essential hope-- of leading us out of the wilderness."

This is where the Democrats should be planting their flag. Agreeing to cut vital government programs including Social Security and Medicare in order to obtain some tip money from millionaires isn't "shared sacrifice"-- it's human sacrifice. Up until now the Tea Partiers in Congress have refused to take yes for an answer. But if David Koch is now willing to accept some token tax hikes you can be sure the Republicans are waking up to how foolish that stance is.

No matter who wins the presidency and the majority after November's election, the nation will be facing the GOP's well-laid trap of the so-called "fiscal cliff." And unless there is a bloc of Democrats willing to demand Prosperity instead of Austerity there is a very good chance we will be thrown into another recession, just as our British friends across the pond faced when their government chose the slash government  in the midst of an epic slump. And even if we manage to dodge that bullet, we will have more slow growth, rising inequality and the further degradation of our vital social safety net. It is the wrong prescription for the Democratic Party and the people of this country.

You can help by helping elect these progressive House candidates who will come to congress with Prosperity Economics as their mandate. We urge you to read their comments at Blue America's Americans for REAL Prosperity page and give what you can. We simply must make our voices heard in Washington on this important issue. 

And the newest candidate to get behind "Prosperity Economics" as the antidote to the failed Austerity agenda being pushed on us by conservatives and corporate shills, is Missa Eaton who's running against reactionary multimillionaire Mike Kelly in northwestern Pennsylvania (PA-03). Like most of us, she explained that she's "been a part of a middle class family all my life. I have seen the hard work that goes into making sure dinner is on the table every night. I know what is like to live paycheck to paycheck, and sadly I have seen the American dream beginning to slip away. I announced my campaign as a candidate who believes the American dream is still attainable for anyone who follows the rules and works hard. The “New Strategy for Prosperity” given to us by Jacob Hacker will help us achieve just that. The principles of this new economic policy are something anyone should be able to support. It ensures an economic policy that isn’t built on deregulation and tax cuts, policy that works for the middle class. The policy keeps Medicare and Social Security solvent and adds a public option to the Affordable Care Act. This policy does not allow corporations the same rights as individuals and allows us to move our country forward."

Ever Imagine A Pennsylvania Politician Would Equate Women's Health Care With Pearl Harbor AND 9/11?

About a month ago, I endeavored to introduce DWT readers to the execrable Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) and the Democrat who's running against him, Missa Eaton. Apparently the tubby car salesman didn't feel he had gotten enough attention and decided to make a national spectacle of himself on the very day that the birth control mandate officially became part of the Affordable Care Act. The outsourcing fanatic, hoping to take voters' minds off his horrifying economic record, declared religious freedom dead in America and conflated the gaining of health care coverage for 47 million Americans women with the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Is Mike Kelly unhinged? Or just trying to get voters in Erie to keep from thinking about his record of shipping their jobs overseas?

Seems a little over the top, no?

"I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked. One is December 7th, that's Pearl Harbor day. The other is September 11th, and that's the day of the terrorist attack. I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates."

Healthcare for women... a day of infamy? What is wrong with this freak? Is this just another front in the Republican War Against Women? Here's what Mike Kelly was so pissed off about:

• 2,121,806 Pennsylvania women who will now have access to birth control, diabetes screening, HIV tests and mammograms;

• Pennsylvania women being granted access to potentially life-saving tests and services, without having to worry about costs;

• Pennsylvania women being able to take control of their well-being and make decisions to keep them healthy, catch possibly serious conditions at an earlier state and protect themselves and their families from colossal medical bills.

Like most of his constituents, Missa was flabbergasted by Kelly's crazy diatribe against women. “These comments were despicable, and an insult to every veteran, the families of those killed at Pearl Harbor, and the first responders, victims and families and friends who lost loved ones on 9/11," she told a group of supporters in Butler. "The comparison to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 is ludicrous and compares foreign acts of aggression upon our nation to a piece of domestic legislation that sincerely tries to provide women with access to quality, affordable healthcare. As you know, I come from a military family, and Mike Kelly does too. How he can compare yesterday to a 'day that we lost our religious freedom' is just despicable.  This isn’t about religious freedom, this is about HIV screening, cholesterol screening, HPV testing other medical procedures that keep women healthy. Obviously, a healthy woman isn’t important in the extreme right Republican America. If this doesn’t prove how out of touch he is with every group that lives in this district, nothing will.”

Apparently, nothing will. The next day the pig-headed Kelly was doubling down on the crazy. After other members of Congress whose districts were affected by 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, told him to get a grip on himself and cool it, he started digging himself in deeper.

"The HHS mandate is an undeniable and unprecedented attack on Americans’ First Amendment rights,” his spokesman told Newsmax.com.

“Our freedoms and way of life have been under attack before, from both internal and external threats," he said. "If we fail to defend our constitutional rights, we risk losing the freedoms that so many brave men and women have given their lives to defend throughout the course of our nation’s history."

If you'd like to help Missa defeat this doofus, please consider making a contribution to her campaign here.

PA-3 Candidates Missa Eaton (D) & Mike Kelly (R) Square Off In The Battle Over Free Trade vs Fair Trade

The Missa Luba by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin has been one of my favorite pieces of music since I became aware of music. Missa Eaton, on the other hand, is someone I just met-- but I have a feeling I'm going to like her as much as I like the Missa Luba. After winning the Democratic primary, Missa is the Democratic candidate running for Congress in the 3rd District of Pennsylvania, the swing district centered on Erie, currently occupied by master of self-entitlement Mike Kelly. Missa, who has worked in education for more than 15 years, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Penn State Shenango. She comes from a blue collar background and has spent most of her career helping students retrain and rebuild their skill sets to be better prepared to find good paying jobs in this tough economy. She's running on a 5-point plan for western Pennsylvania: Job Creation and Economic Development; Social Security and Medicare Protection; Investment In Our Future through Education Initiatives; Access to Affordable Healthcare; and an American Energy Policy Based On Sustainability. That puts her on a collision course with Kelly on every item of her agenda. Kelly has no plan-- at least not for the public-- and has spent the last year-and-a-half appeasing teabaggers and the hard core of the GOP base instead of attending to his constituents' needs or working across the aisle with Democrats and independents. Recent job performance polls show that the residents of Pennsylvania are unhappy and disillusioned with Republican Party leadership both in the state and on Capitol Hill. The boundaries of the 3rd CD have changed and include new parts of the district that may not vote for a former car salesman who is just going to sell them a bill of goods rather than having a plan to bring back manufacturing jobs which are the backbone of the middle class working families that make up the district.

I asked Missa to introduce herself to DWT readers by focussing on one of the issues that she-- and northwest Pennsylvania residents feel most strongly about: the poisonous trade agreements that both Inside-the-Beltway political Establishments have given to corporate high rollers. As we mentioned on Independence Day, Kelly owns Hyundai/Kia Car dealerships and has been an aggressive force behind so-called "free" trade agreements that are good for his own personal bottom line but have been devastating to working families across the Midwest, and particularly in western Pennsylvania.

Missa is certain that special interests prefer these trade agreements that benefit wealthy Republican elected officials and wealthy donors. This is one of the reasons why voters are fed up with Republican leaders. Besides unfair trade agreements, Republicans like Kelly consistently vote for tax credits for companies off-shoring jobs. On June 19, 2012, Mike Kelly and his Republican colleagues voted against a plan to pass the “United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act.” This legislation would require certain call centers to disclose when they plan on relocating outside of the United States. Additionally, the legislation would stop companies that ship jobs overseas from getting federal loans and grants and give them adequate time to comply with the measure. It would also give consumers a right to speak to a worker based in the United States instead of a worker in a foreign country.

That same day, Mr. Kelly voted against a plan to ensure that all items offered for sale in any gift shop or visitor center located within a unit of the National Park System are produced in the United States. It is also well known that Kelly has about 6 million dollars invested in energy companies and votes for subsidies for these corporations. He's the 13th richest Member of Congress-- via a marriage to an heiress to the Phillips Petroleum fortune-- and has proven to be out of touch with the middle class families that live in his district. People are fed up with being sold out by their representatives who are more interested in having the job than in performing the job. Please read Missa's guest post below-- and if you agree with her sentiments and proposals about U.S. trade policies, consider giving her campaign a hand at our ActBlue page.

Fair Trade: A Way to Bring Manufacturing Back to the U.S.

-by Missa Eaton

An important aspect of job creation and economic development is changing our trade policies, which currently benefit other countries and help keep jobs and profits overseas while preventing jobs and profits from coming back to the United States. The President of the AFL-CIO had concerns about the South Korea Free Trade Agreement, stating that the government needed to address the imbalanced market-access provisions in the agreement and to revisit the flawed investment, procurement, and services provisions as well. According to Commerce Department figures, in 2006, only about 4,000 US-manufactured cars (excluding GM's Daewoo subsidiary) were sold in South Korea while sales of cars manufactured by South Korean companies (including cars manufactured in Korean-owned US plants) in the United States exceeded 800,000. South Korean automakers sold 730,863 vehicles in the United States in 2005, while American auto companies sold only 5,795 in South Korea, according to Commerce Department figures. This is unlikely to change for the better since the Korea Free Trade Agreement has been signed. This kind of free trade isn't fair trade.

Special interests, including wealthy politicians and their wealthy donors, enjoy the benefits and profits from these free trade agreements. Workers rarely do. Remedies to our trade deficits should include three elements: enforcing trade rules to balance our trade with other countries, bringing complaints against countries that manipulate their currencies, and implementing fair trade agreements instead of free trade agreements. Related to trade are efforts to roll back incentives for companies to offshore jobs.

Enforcing Trade Rules

Important to creating a level playing field is imposing duties when manufacturers in other countries are found to gain substantial subsidies from their governments. These subsidies can range from 12% to 30%, which hamstrings our manufacturing process and undermines the security of American working families. These rules already exist; they simply must be enforced. The political will has not been present recently in doing so, because driving manufacturing out of this country means that
multinational corporations can offshore jobs at greatly reduced wages. Anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws must be enforced. This imbalance has led to the loss of millions of jobs and the closing of tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities.

Fighting Back Against Manipulation of Currency

Although the U.S. Overall trade deficit has contracted slightly over the last several months, our trade deficit with countries known to manipulate the value of their currency has results in an increased trade deficit. Trade deficits with such countries amount to billions of dollars each month in lost revenue and increased uncertainty for workers and companies in the U.S. Both the Department of the Treasury and the House of Representatives are turning their backs on American manufacturers and their workers by not listing countries such as China as currency manipulators and by failing to bring bi-partisan legislation to deter currency manipulation to the House floor for a vote. Russia is now being considered for WTO favored trading status. Like China, Russia is also involved in directing its companies, subsidizing its companies, and manipulation its currency. These kinds of state-managed and state-directed economies do not allow competition by U.S. companies in selling American goods abroad. Further, value added taxes (VATs) undermine the U.S.'s ability to compete with foreign companies.

Fair Trade Agreements

The last time the U.S. exported more than it imported was 37 years ago. Our relatively recent losses in manufacturing due to off-shoring of jobs is exacerbated by bilateral trade agreements through which American companies and workers consistently lose. So-called free trade agreements are opportunities for developing markets to export more cheaply produced goods to the U.S., but rarely for American companies to export our better-made products to our trading partners. Although our exports have risen recently, goods imported are keeping pace, and our trade deficits grow. Every billion dollars in trade deficit translates into thousands of lost jobs and the resulting slowing of our economy.

While cheating exists that contributes to American trade deficits, our free trade agreements also contribute to our deficits. We need to look to fair trade agreements that protect American workers and companies. These fair trade agreements must have elements that ensure level playing fields for all partners: goals of balanced trade; creating a national trade policy that protects our economy and our security; reciprocity between and among our trading partners; encouraging our trading partners to move state-sponsored manufacturing into privately owned companies; discouragement of currency undervaluation as a violation of trade agreements; rules of origin that must include content percentages; adjustment of value added taxes imposed on U.S. goods exported and rebated to foreign goods imported; protections for perishable goods; enforcement of U.S. standards of product and food safety; periodic renegotiation of trade agreements based on trade imbalances; and labor provisions that ensure positive working conditions, collective bargaining rights, and other labor provisions found in the U.S.

These provisions of fair trade agreements not only create a level playing field for U.S. companies and workers but they ensure that fair working conditions are available for workers within partner countries.

Trade agreements in the U.S. are long-standing and complex. By and large, these agreements have opened up trade of U.S. goods where no trade might have existed before. The practical result, however, has been to increase the trade deficit. Issues of trade deficits must be addressed with cooperation between the Congress and the Administration. As the next congressional representative from a manufacturing-dense district, I will work tirelessly to bring manufacturing back to our country and to protect the companies and workers of the U.S. through our trade agreements.

Outsourcing vs Insourcing... Mitt Romney And Mike Kelly

A lot of fuss has been made this week-- the celebration of our country's independence from Britain-- over Mitt Romney's tendency to avoid American taxes by stashing and investing his money overseas in notorious off-shore tax havens. But the GOP has a bigger problem than a shady, selfish presidential nominee. And we'll come back to that in a minute (although if you watched the video above, you already know what I'm getting at). First the Vanity Fair trip around the world peering into Romney's hidden millions. It's the story of a sociopath, an Ayn Rand character come to life with a sense of unfettered entitlement, righteous self-absorption and what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it avarice. Romney has been a cheat all his life, always, as Vanity Fair explains, "willing to push into gray areas when it came to business," urging his employees to bend the law and use industrial espionage to get a leg up. And that's how he's always approached paying his own taxes... gray areas.

[A]s he tried to nail down the Republican nomination for president of the United States, Romney’s gray areas were again an issue when he repeatedly resisted calls to release more details of his net worth, his tax returns, and the large investments and assets held by him and his wife, Ann. Finally the other Republican candidates forced him to do so, but only highly selective disclosures were forthcoming.

Even so, these provided a lavish smorgasbord for Romney’s critics. Particularly jarring were the Romneys’ many offshore accounts. As Newt Gingrich put it during the primary season, “I don’t know of any American president who has had a Swiss bank account.” But Romney has, as well as other interests in such tax havens as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys’ spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in “jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,” as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.

That’s not the only money Romney has in tax havens. Because of his retirement deal with Bain Capital, his finances are still deeply entangled with the private-equity firm that he founded and spun off from Bain and Co. in 1984. Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from it-- in early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income. The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.

...The media soon noticed Romney’s familiarity with foreign tax havens. A $3 million Swiss bank account appeared in the 2010 returns, then winked out of existence in 2011 after the trustee closed it, as if to remind us of George Romney’s warning that one or two tax returns can provide a misleading picture. Ed Kleinbard, a professor of tax law at the University of Southern California, says the Swiss account “has political but not tax-policy resonance,” since it—like many other Romney investments—constituted a bet against the U.S. dollar, an odd thing for a presidential candidate to do. The Obama campaign provided a helpful world map pointing to the tax havens Bermuda, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands, where Romney and his family have assets, each with the tagline “Value: not disclosed in tax returns.”


Romney’s personal tax rate is a particular point of interest. In 2010 and 2011, Mitt and Ann paid $6.2 million in federal tax on $42.5 million in income, for an average tax rate just shy of 15 percent, substantially less than what most middle-income Americans pay. Romney manages this low rate because he takes his payments from Bain Capital as investment income, which is taxed at a maximum 15 percent, instead of the 35 percent he would pay on “ordinary” income, such as salaries and wages. Many tax experts argue that the form of remuneration he receives, known as carried interest, is really just a fee charged by investment managers, so it should instead be taxed at the 35 percent rate. Lee Sheppard, a contributing editor at the trade publication Tax Notes, whose often controversial articles are read widely by tax professionals, is nonplussed that the Obama campaign has been so listless on the issue of carried interest. “Romney is the poster boy, the best argument, for taxing this profit share as ordinary income,” says Sheppard.

In the face of such arguments, Romney’s defense is that he never broke the rules: if there is a problem, it is in the laws, not in his behavior. “I pay all the taxes that are legally required, not a dollar more,” he said. Even so. “When you are running for president, you might want to err on the side of overpaying your taxes, and not chase every tax gimmick that comes down the pike,” says Sheppard. “It kind of looks tacky.”

The assertion that he broke no laws is widely accepted. But it is worth asking if it is actually true. The answer, in fact, isn’t straightforward. Romney, like the superhero who whirls and backflips unscathed through a web of laser beams while everyone else gets zapped, is certainly a remarkable financial acrobat. But careful analysis of his financial and business affairs also reveals a man who, like some other Wall Street titans, seems comfortable striding into some fuzzy gray zones.

And if you want to look into more of those fuzzy gray zones, I urge you to read the whole Vanity Fair article. No sane person would trust this man to run the country... or anything else. It makes you contemplate the subtle differences between a low-grade hustler and a high-grade hustler and how one breed winds up in prison and the other... in corporate board meetings-- and running for president. But this post isn't meant to be yet another indictment of Mitt Romney. His disease is a Republican disease: selfishness and greed, a sociopath's tendency to step on everyone and everything to get ahead for himself. Let's take a look at a little known freshman congressman from northwest Pennsylvania, Mike Kelly. Now the 13th richest man in the House, he was a beneficiary of the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010, a multimillionaire many times over running as a teabagger against a confused, weak and conflicted conservative Democrat, Kathy Dahlkemper. She voted time and again against working families and Democratic principles, encouraged to do so by the DCCC who push Democrats in swing districts like PA-3 to vote like Republicans. The effect was to keep base Democratic voters home on election day. Of the 146,846 voters (51%) who elected Dahlkemper in 2008, only 88,924 (44%) bothered showing up for her in 2010-- while GOP enthusiasm was sky-high. 111,909 (56%) voters backed Kelly, not a bad falloff from the 139,757 who had been to the polls for longtime incumbent Phil English when he lost to Dahlkemper two years before.

Like Romney, Kelly was born into a wealthy automotive family. His father owned a successful Chevrolet-Cadillac dealership and when he took over the family business he expanded by buying up the franchises of South Korean automakers Kia and Hyundai. He's the Chairman of the Hyundai Eastern Region Dealer Council and Vice Chairman of the Hyundai National Dealer Council and he's vice chairman of the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, a position that has given him a platform to push unfair "free trade" deals, which result in the loss of American manufacturing jobs to cheap Asian markets-- but help make Kia and Hyundai dealers very wealthy. But his dad's car dealership and his deals with the Koreans aren't the only things that made Kelly so rich. He married an heir to the Phillips Petroleum fortune. Do you think the millions of dollars in natural gas and oil stocks his wife owns has influenced Kelly's approach to his job in Congress? The guy who didn't talk about his Kia and Hyundai dealerships when he was lobbying for the South Korea Free Trade Agreement, has been as dedicated to Big Oil's toxic agenda as any Texas or Oklahoma crooked congressman.

Some people really hate the Chevy Volt, though we suspect few people hate it as much as Chevrolet-Cadillac dealership owner, and freshman Republican Congressman Mike Kelly. After repeatedly going on record declaring that there is “no market” for the Chevy Volt, on the eve of December 30th, the oil-rich Kelly introduced legislation to repeal the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles.

Kelly, who inherited his father’s car dealership in 1995, and married the heiress of the Phillips-Conoco oil company, has introduced legislation repealing the $7,500 tax credit, declaring it wasteful spending. This, despite voting to keep much-more generous subsidies and tax credits for hugely profitable oil companies. Kelly’s reasoning? “We want companies to be profitable.” Opps, looks like he let a little too much truth slip out there!

Then again why would Kelly, who has over $6 million in oil-related assets, want to end these generous subsidies for companies that make him money? How this is not a clear conflict of interest, I do not know, but even Kelly’s own constituents already seem fed up with him, as this video from a July town hall session shows.



In the video above, Kelly talks about poverty and how factories have gone under, yet he seems to have no problem bashing the very people who make the cars he sells. Kelly also tries to deflect the question with a question about pensions and portfolios, before going off on a spiel regarding rich vs. poor, have vs. have-nots, and rather than talk about oil companies he starts talking about GE not paying taxes, and at no point does he answer the actual question.

For a guy who inherited a car dealership, and married an oil heiress, Rep. Mike Kelly certainly has a lot of whining to do about the tax code.

Happy Independence Day! And yes, of course that photo of Romney and Rove was doctored. Here's the original picture; the one with him and Congressman Kelly isn't available yet.