1nc
The Ex-Im bank charter will be renewed -- White House and Dems
capitalizing on GOP fracture
Cohen 6/25
Stephanie BNA “White House, Business Groups Press House Republicans to Renew ExportImport Bank”¶ http://www.bna.com/white-house-business-n17179891538/
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the majority leader-elect of the House, appeared to widen a chasm within the party over
the weekend when he said during a television interview that he would be willing to let the authorization for the Ex-Im
Bank expire in September. McCarthy's position may make it harder for Democrats and Republicans who support
reauthorization to chart a path for renewal through the House.¶ On Fox News Sunday, McCarthy was asked if he agrees
with conservatives who say that the Ex-Im Bank is a form of crony capitalism and should be put out of business.¶ “The last
authorization of the Ex-Im Bank directed the president and the treasury secretary to wind down the Ex-Im bank, negotiate
with other countries, to wind them down so we have a level playing field,” McCarthy said. “I think Ex-Im Bank is one that
government does not have to be involved in. The private sector can do it.”¶ Roadblock to Reauthorization¶ McCarthy's new
comments now align him with Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who
has stood as a roadblock to reauthorization in recent months. Hensarling told colleagues as recently as June 18 that he
won't produce a bill to extend the bank's lending authority past its Sept. 30 expiration date.¶ But McCarthy's comments
also seem to reverse an impression he gave some fellow House Republicans prior to his election as majority leader that he
would push Hensarling to move a reauthorization bill through the committee process.¶ Following McCarthy's comments,
42 House Republicans dispatched a letter June 23 to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and McCarthy calling for a multiyear reauthorization of the bank's charter.¶ “In a perfect world this type of financing would not be necessary,” the
failure to reauthorize Ex-Im would amount to
unilateral disarmament in the face of other nations' aggressive
efforts to help their exporters .Ӧ McCarthy sits on the House Financial Services Committee, which
lawmakers said. “However,
is slated to hold a hearing June 25 titled “Examining Reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank: Corporate Necessity or
Corporate Welfare?”¶ Bank Benefits Main Street¶ Industry
groups, including the National
Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, support
renewal of the lender's charter before it expires at the end of September. President
Barack Obama has proposed a five-year renewal and a gradual increase
in the bank's lending cap , to $160 billion from the current $140 billion.¶ Business-friendly
Democrats quickly rounded up examples of small businesses that benefit from
the Ex-Im bank and are located on Main Streets throughout the U.S., including FHC
Inc.; Integrated Industrial Systems Inc.; Jason Mills, LLC; Halcyon Manufacturing Inc.; Diamond Power International,
Inc.; Estron Chemicals, Inc.; Midwest Ag Enterprises, Inc.; and River Valley Manufacturing, Inc.¶ “From Burley, Idaho, to
South Bend Indiana, Ex-Im helps manufacturers, farmers, equipment suppliers, chemical companies, and other small
businesses that produce everything from fences to portable access ramps for Americans with disabilities,” Phil LaRue,
communications director of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of pro-business Democrats in the House, said in an e-
The White House June 23 outlined its support for
reauthorization and questioned how Republicans could oppose an entity
supported by President Ronald Reagan.¶ The White House reiterated its position
that reauthorization of the bank furthers President Obama's domestic policymaking agenda by expanding economic opportunity for the middle class.¶ “[T]he
mail.¶ White House Defends Reauthorization¶
incoming majority leader is certainly entitled to his own opinion,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reports
at a press briefing June 20. But, Earnest added, the benefits that flow from a reauthorization “are clear.”¶ “Ex-Im Bank
helps American companies create and support jobs here at home at no cost to taxpayers, and it helps us meet our export
goals, which is why reauthorization
of the [Ex-Im] bank has historically enjoyed
bipartisan support in the past,” Earnest said. “Additionally, the [Ex-Im] bank provides
American small businesses the certainty and protection they need to enter new
markets, grow their businesses, and create jobs here at home.Ӧ Both the White House and
Democrats in the House jumped at the chance to highlight friction
within the Republican party . The Democratic Leader's Office June 23 released an e-mail highlighting
unfavorable media reaction to McCarthy's remarks.¶ A June 17 document from House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (DMd.) included the renewal of the Ex-Im Bank as one of eight bills on a to-do list for the 113th Congress, adding that
“House Republicans have a choice: they can work with us to get things done and start checking off the tasks on Congress'
to-do list, or they can ignore the American people and veer even further to the right.”
Obama’s PC is vital to reauthorization
Paletta 6/24
Damian covers economic policy for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau. “ExportImport Bank 101” Jun 24, 2014 http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/06/24/export-importbank-101/
Q: Who are
the people worth watching as this unfolds?¶ A: Start with incoming House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.). He lit some
business leaders’ hair on fire when he proclaimed this weekend that he wanted the bank to go out of business.¶ He voted to support the agency in 2012, and his
pivot helps the conservative wing of the party gain momentum to shut the place
down. Another key figure is Speaker of the House John Boehner (R., Ohio). A lot of business leaders who support the bank believe he’s their best shot for a
Hail Mary pass as October approaches. The roles of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) will also be
pivotal. Will they really expend political capital to fight for this agency ?
Failure to reauthorize reverses recovery – the bank is the most
effective tool to foster export growth
Dukelow 6/28
Josh Dukelow, VP of Public Policy and Leadership at Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce, June
28th, 2014, “Export-Import Bank needs to be reauthorized”,
http://www.postcrescent.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/06/28/export-import-bankneeds-reauthorized/11575457///SQR
one of the most effective tools to promote exports is the
Export-Import Bank . This institution exists to help finance private international trade deals. According to
reporting from the Wall Street Journal, in 2013 the “Ex-Im Bank,” as it’s known, authorized $27
billion to facilitate $37.4 billion in U.S. export sales, and returned more than $1
billion in profits (from interest and fees) to the U.S. Treasury. These funds supported 200,000 jobs at 3,400
employers around the country. This federal agency is growing the economy and turning a
profit. Despite that, some members in the House of Representatives want to put the Ex-Im Bank out of business. Critics
At the federal level,
aren’t claiming the bank is ineffective. Rather, many, such as Rep. Kevin McCarthy, soon to be House majority leader, feel
the function of financing business deals should be left to the private sector. In a recent interview, he said the Ex-Im Bank
is “something government does not have to be involved in.” There are even some who claim that the benefit of the bank’s
lending only goes to big corporations, and therefore amounts to “corporate welfare.” But don’t we all benefit when a local
employer like Appvion leverages Ex-Im Bank support and its growth brings more jobs to the Fox Cities? Supporters of the
bank point out that many
other countries offer similar support for their exporters and to
eliminate America’s Ex-Im Bank would put American companies at a
disadvantage. Our competitors like France, Korea, China, Germany and Brazil pump subsidies into their exporting
companies, because they know exporting leads to economic strength. Congress has the responsibility to
reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank before its charter expires Sept. 30. If it doesn’t, this important
part of our economic recovery could be shut down and exporters could be left scrambling
to find financing for their trade deals. Removal of a key piece of support for exporters
could significantly constrain any economic recovery . By tapping into consumer
and business markets abroad, American companies can continue to grow their revenue and add good, family-supporting
jobs. Reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank will ensure that exports will flow out and much-needed revenue will flow
back in to American employers and workers.
Economic decline causes global war
Royal 10 (Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction – U.S. Department of Defense,
“Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises”, Economics of
War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, Ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213215)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict .
Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the
security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and
national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and
Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated
with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one preeminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a
redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances,
increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain
redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power
may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles
combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers,
although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain
unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future
expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and
security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so
long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade
decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict
increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could
potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist
moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and
external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation
between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic
downturn. They write: The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually
reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the
presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts
self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an
increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to
spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting
government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic
decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts
to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and
Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated.
Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary
tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are
generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided
evidence showing that periods of weak economic
performance in the U nited S tates, and thus weak
Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary,
recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic
crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at
systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has
not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.
Will Pass 2nc
Will Pass -Democrat backing
Puzzanghera and Memoli 6/24
Jim Puzzanghera and Michael A. Memoli, June 24th, 2014, “Shift in GOP leadership leaves
Export-Import Bank at risk of closing”, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-export-importbank-20140625-story.html#page=1//SQR
FirmGreen was concerned Congress would not reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which provides loans and other assistance to foreign
entities that must be used to buy U.S. products. The loss of the project led Wilburn to furlough three of his company's 10 permanent
employees. "I'm not a big business. I'm not a crony capitalist," said Wilburn, a Republican scheduled to testify at Wednesday's hearing. "No
private bank will fulfill that role for us." Boeing said it would be at a competitive disadvantage without the bank because its main
competitor, Airbus Group in Leiden, the Netherlands, has the support of export finance agencies in France, Germany and Britain. "The
airplane market is highly competitive, and every deal is won or lost by the slightest of margins," said Boeing spokesman John Kvasnosky.
"Any uncertainty in financing availability could unnecessarily tilt the field against Boeing, putting thousands of manufacturing jobs at
." Top business groups have launched a full-scale effort to save the bank.
risk
"This is
about the American economy and the fact that we are today more than ever before in a global, competitive economy," said Thomas
Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "We think the Ex-Im Bank can help us meet that challenge." ¶ Senate Majority
Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday the bank has wide support in that chamber. If the
House takes up legislation to reauthorize the bank, it's likely to pass because of
strong Democratic backing. Two years ago, 183 Democrats joined with 147 Republicans to extend the bank's charter for
two more years and increase the limit on its overall credit exposure to $140 billion. On Monday, 42 House Republicans
wrote to McCarthy and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) urging them to "move
forward with a multi-year reauthorization of Ex-Im that provides certainty and
stability for U.S. manufacturers and exporters of all sizes." Boehner and McCarthy voted to
Leader Harry
reauthorize the bank two years ago. But Boehner indicated Tuesday that this time he would defer to Hensarling, whose committee has
jurisdiction over the bank. "My job is to work with our members to get to a place where the members are comfortable," said Boehner, calling
it a "thorny issue." "Some people believe that we shouldn't have it at all, others believe that we should reauthorize it with significant
reforms, and we're going to work our way through this," he said.
Business Support
Paletta 6/24
Damian covers economic policy for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau. “ExportImport Bank 101” Jun 24, 2014 http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/06/24/export-importbank-101/
Q: What do businesses think?¶ A: Hard to generalize. There’s a big coalition
of companies,
led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of
Manufacturers, that is pushing to get the agency’s charter reauthorized. But some
other businesses, notably Delta Air Lines DAL -0.13%, have in the past called for the agency’s
powers to be scaled back dramatically, fearing that cheap financing helps their overseas rivals.
Delta’s message is shifting, however, now that the agency is on the ropes.
White House COC alliance
Sargent 6/24
Greg, Washington Post, “Another government shutdown?” June 24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/24/another-governmentshutdown/
The bank provides direct loans, guarantees, and credit insurance to aid foreign purchasers in
buying American-made goods. Its charter expires at the end of September, unless Congress acts to
the White House
and the Republican establishment-friendly Chamber of Commerce both pressed
the case for the bank’s renewal on Monday, the day after McCarthy’s comments
renew it…The dispute over the bank has made some unusual allies —
brought the debate to the forefront.
GOP compromise coming
Wingfield 6/26
Brian Wingfield is a reporter for Bloomberg News in Washington. “Republicans Crafting Ex-Im
Bank Changes to Thwart Foes of Agency” June 26,
2014http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-06-26/republicans-crafting-ex-im-changes-tothwart-agency-foes
With the fate of the U.S. Export-Import Bank hanging in the balance, a group of House
Republicans met today to discuss ways the agency could be restructured to satisfy
critics who want it shut down.¶ Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee met privately and
talked about altering the bank’s accounting practices and requiring annual audits, said Representative Stephen Fincher of
Tennessee, a member who attended the meeting.¶ The committee is considering whether to reauthorize the 80-year-old
bank, which will shut Sept. 30 if no action is taken. The institution provides loan guarantees, loans and insurance to help
U.S. exports.¶ “There
is much support on the committee for reforming and
reauthorization,” Fincher said today in a phone interview. “We’re working with the chairman and can hopefully
have something next week.”¶ Fincher said that during next week’s congressional recess he will work with members to craft
acceptable language to win support for reauthorization. He said ideas discussed today included stripping the bank of loanmaking powers to focus on loan guarantees. They also discussed ways to provide more help to small- and medium-sized
businesses.¶ “Just cutting it off cold turkey probably is not the responsible thing to do,” he said.
Will Pass – Business Push
Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies making aggressive
push
Courher Herald 6/28
Courher Herald, June 28th, 2014, “Cantwell, Murray & Inslee urge to keep export, import bank
open”, http://www.blscourierherald.com/news/264996591.html//SQR
“Reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank isn’t about politics, or Republicans and Democrats. It’s about creating jobs here in the United
States and keeping our businesses competitive in the global marketplace. That’s it,” Senator Murray said. “Of the more than 200,000
American jobs supported by the Export-Import Bank last year, more than half were in Washington state, so while this is national priority,
it’s particularly critical for jobs and the economy in our home state.” The entire Washington state delegation – in both the House and the
Ex-Im’s reauthorization has been backed by
business groups around the country, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable. Historically,
Senate -- voted for the bank’s reauthorization in 2012.
the bank has received strong bipartisan support. The Ex-Im Bank, which is self-supported through interest payment and fees, turns a profit
for U.S. taxpayers, and transferred $1 billion in revenue to the U.S. Treasury in 2013. It has been reauthorized about two-dozen times since
it was created in 1934. “I know that I am speaking for hundreds of small- and medium-sized manufacturers across the country when I say to
our Congress: Please reauthorize Ex-Im Bank without delay,” Stone, of SCAFCO, said. “The future of America’s exports and a significant
amount of American manufacturers depend on your action on this important issue.” In the past year alone, Ex-Im financing assisted 84
Washington companies, including 64 small businesses, and close to $21 billion worth of sales to foreign customers. In FY 2013, nearly 90
percent of the Ex-Im Bank’s transactions—a record-high 3,413—involved American small businesses. In FY 2011, more than 700 first-time
small businesses and nearly 500 minority- and women-owned businesses used the bank’s services. Ex-Im opened a new branch in Seattle in
August 2012, with the goal of helping small businesses get more access to the bank’s financing. If private banks are unwilling or unable, the
Export-Import Bank steps in and finances or insures the purchase of U.S. goods by foreign customers. It also helps U.S. companies stay
competitive against their counterparts overseas that are financed by foreign governments.
Will Pass – Bipart
Bipartisan efforts for reauthorization
Wingfield 6/26
Brian Wingfield is a reporter for Bloomberg News in Washington. “Republicans Crafting Ex-Im
Bank Changes to Thwart Foes of Agency” June 26,
2014http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-06-26/republicans-crafting-ex-im-changes-tothwart-agency-foes
In the House, at least two renewal proposals have emerged. Representative John
Campbell, a California Republican, said he is drafting a measure to keep the bank in
business for three years and trim the lending cap to $95 billion. Representative Denny Heck,
a Washington Democrat, said he has a bill to renew the bank through 2021 and raise
the limit to $175 billion.
TOA
TOA in both Houses
Wingfield 6/25
Brian Wingfield is a reporter for Bloomberg News in Washington. “Ex-Im Chairman Hochberg
Defends Against Republican Foes” June 25, 2014 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-0625/republican-backing-ex-im-s-demise-spars-with-democrat
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yesterday said he plans to set a reauthorization
vote before the charter lapses in September.¶ In the House, at least two renewal
proposals have emerged. Representative John Campbell, a California Republican, said he is
drafting a measure to keep the bank in business for three years and trim the lending cap to $95
billion. Representative Denny Heck, a Washington Democrat, said he has a bill to renew the bank
through 2021 and raise the limit to $175 billion.
Deadline and Tea Party posturing makes reauthorization TOA for
media and White House
Caldwell 6/26
Leigh Ann CNN “The next battle in Washington” Jun 26, 2014
http://www.kspr.com/news/politics/The-next-battle-in-Washington/21051736_26684572
We've seen this dynamic before: A mundane and wonky issue that many have
never heard of suddenly elevates to national prominence. Remember the debt ceiling and that
it was mostly an unknown quantity five years ago?¶ This time it's renewing the authority of this thing
called the Export-Import Bank to do business.¶ The obscure independent agency provides loan guarantees
to foreign companies struggling to secure financing to purchase goods from American manufacturers.¶ But much of its
financing goes to aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing and costs taxpayers about $200 million per year, which critics
contend wastes money and skews private markets.¶ The
agency's authority to make loans expires
September 30 and Congress is now tasked with deciding once again whether to
renew it.¶ But it also is the latest battle emerging within the Republican Party, once again
pitting the establishment against the tea party.¶ Michael Needham, CEO of Heritage Action, the political arm of a similarly
named conservative think tank and leading opponent, said the Ex-Im Bank is, "the purist form of corporate cronyism that
exists in Washington, D.C."¶ On the other side of the debate is Christopher Wenk, senior director for international policy
at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents business interests in the capital.¶ Wenk said the bank's demise would
cost 200,000 jobs and that the chamber's members nationwide are "scratching their heads about why this is such a big
deal in Washington."¶ The agency has been in place for nearly 80 years. Congress reauthorized it in 2012, passing
overwhelmingly despite some noisy Republican opposition. There was no Republican pushback to its previous
reauthorization.¶ Why the controversy now?¶ With the rise of the tea party in 2010 and the resulting influx of lawmakers
fiercely opposed to more government spending, the issue had the means to gain some traction.¶ Needham said his
organization devoted time and resources to lobby against and were "excited" to see 93 House members and 20 senators
oppose it the last time around.¶ Heritage and other conservative groups, including Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and
Americans for Prosperity, have now had two years to gin up a coalition and pressure Congress.¶ In addition, Rep. Jeb
Hensarling of Texas, a fierce opponent of the bank, was elected to lead the committee that oversees it, helping to raise the
profile of opponents.¶ The bank has long had critics, but nothing has risen to the level where Congress might try to shut it
down.¶ The bank has been involved in numerous lawsuits, including by Delta Air Lines and related groups who contend its
lending practices boost foreign competitors through aircraft sales. Delta flies worldwide. Environmental groups have also
launched court challenges, opposing the bank's heavy backing of fossil fuels.¶ In a campaign address about cutting
government waste, candidate Barack Obama called the Ex-Im Bank "corporate welfare."¶ In the 1980s, William H. Becker
and William M. McClenahan wrote in their book "The Market, the State and the Export-Import Bank" that President
Ronald Reagan was "initially unsympathetic" as opposition from the left and the right rose.¶ But neither Reagan nor
Obama tried to dissolve it. Obama now supports it and asked
Congress to raise its borrowing cap
and extend its authority for five years.¶ The politics¶ It's also an election year and the
issue was elevated last week because the newly elected House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,
flipped his position and came out in opposition, emboldening the more
conservative wing of the party.¶ His shift comes after his predecessor, Ex-Im Bank supporter and outgoing
majority leader, Eric Cantor, lost his primary to Dave Brat, who campaigned against corporate welfare.¶ While the
Chamber of Commerce and tea party-linked groups have been battling it out in
Republican primaries, this issue is adding to the feud.¶ "Some see it as a prime opportunity
to make a political statement," Wenk said. "That's' one of my biggest beefs right now."
Debate over charter underway now
Paletta 6/24
Damian covers economic policy for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau. “ExportImport Bank 101” Jun 24, 2014 http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/06/24/export-importbank-101/
The U.S. Export-Import Bank has been in the news a lot lately, as its charter is
expiring and Congress is debating how to proceed. It’s not your typical government agency,
though, and there are a lot of moving parts and competing interests.¶ Here’s a primer:¶ Q: Is this an agency or a bank?¶ A:
Both. The Ex-Im Bank is a federal agency, created by the White House in the 1930s. It receives and returns money to the
U.S. Treasury Department. Its mission is to support U.S. exports by helping provide loans, credit insurance, and loan
guarantees, among other things, on U.S. goods shipped all over the world. It technically makes money, but it has credit
exposure and if it made bad decisions or took on too many risks, it could lose money. It is certainly a type of bank. It
makes loan decisions, and recoups interest and fees.¶ Q: What is happening to it?¶ A: The
agency’s charter
expires at the end of September. If it isn’t reauthorized, it will essentially be unable to originate new loans
or accept new credit applications. It won’t disappear, necessarily, as it will still have a book of business to manage and
monitor, but it will slowly shrink and eventually be out of business.
Obama Pushing
Obama’s making the case for renewal
Sargent 6/24
Greg, Washington Post, “Another government shutdown?” June 24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/24/another-governmentshutdown/
The bank provides direct loans, guarantees, and credit insurance to aid foreign purchasers in buying American-made
goods. Its charter expires at the end of September, unless Congress acts to renew it…The dispute over the bank has made
the White House and the Republican establishment-friendly
Chamber of Commerce both pressed the case for the bank’s renewal on
Monday, the day after McCarthy’s comments brought the debate to the forefront.
some unusual allies —
Obama’s strong pushing reauthorization
Goldfarb 6/26
Zachary, Washington Post White House staff writer, “Candidate Obama, echoing tea party, called
Ex-Im Bank ‘little more than a fund for corporate welfare’” June 26, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/26/candidate-obama-echoingtea-party-called-ex-im-bank-little-more-than-a-fund-for-corporate-welfare/
The administration now is strongly supporting reauthorization of the bank .
I asked the White House how it reconciles its current position with Obama's remarks as a candidate. A spokesman, Eric Schultz,
sent over this statement:¶ Since the President took office, the Ex-Im bank has served an important role in helping firms access financing
the Ex-Im
bank has been a vital source for these firms, and is key to helping us achieve our export goals and
supporting thousands of businesses across the country large and small. We urge
Congress to act to reauthorize the bank
when private sources of finance dried up as a result of the recession in the beginning of the administration. Since then,
AT U o/w L
Dems full court press must overcome conservative republican caucus
French 6/24
Lauren French is a Congress reporter for POLITICO. She was formerly a tax policy reporter for
POLITICO Pro and the author of Morning Tax. Before joining POLITICO, she was an intern with
Reuters covering national security and foreign policy and with McClatchy and The Houston
Chronicle where she did stints on the Hill (Lauren, “House Democrats push for Ex-Im Bank”
Politico, http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/export-import-bank-house-democrats108208.html)//ADravid
Democrats will launch a campaign Tuesday to re-authorize the Export-Import Bank
even as incoming Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is discounting the measure’s chance of
success. Authorization for the bank, which provides federal loans intended to boost U.S. exports, expires at the end of September. But
House
Republicans aren’t rushing to re-up the charter, saying the bank is ill equipped to carry out its duties. If Congress fails to extend the charter,
it will be the first time in 80 years that the bank, which provides loans and loan guarantees to giant corporations and small businesses,
would cease to exist. Democrats say that would put American businesses at a competitive risk. (Also on POLITICO: Messing with Texas on
Congress must take bipartisan action before the Export-Import Bank’s
authorization expires so that we can give certainty to businesses and provide
important resources to keep American exporters competitive. To do otherwise would greatly
the Ex-Im Bank) “
hurt our businesses and our economy,” said Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.) will introduce legislation on
Tuesday that would extend Export-Import Bank’s authorization for seven years and give the bank $175 billion to spend to help companies
like Boeing, Caterpillar and GE export products. The money also helps small businesses find a place in the global market. “The ExportImport Bank is a reliable way for American business—including many small businesses—to sell their goods and services into the world
marketplace,” Heck said. “If we abandon this resource, we are allowing China, Russia, and European countries to gain ground in export
The legislation is supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
and the National Association of Manufacturers - two lobbying behemoths that
hold sway among Republicans. The groups were among the organizations who recently sent a letter to the Hill arguing
deals previously made with us.”
that the bank helps companies compete in “fiercely competitive global markets.” (Also on POLITICO: Kevin McCarthy: Allow Export-
But the Depression-era bank will run up against Republicans, who
are deeply divided on the issue. McCarthy, who was elected as majority leader just last week, said the government
Import Bank to close)
shouldn’t be involved in the bank. “I think Ex-Im Bank is … something government does not have to be involved in. The private sector can
do it,” McCarthy said in an interview on Fox News Sunday this weekend. “One of the biggest problems with government is they go and take
hard-earned money so others do things that the private sector can do. That’s what the Ex-Im Bank does.” McCarthy voted for the bank’s
authorization in 2012. Other top House Republicans don’t appear to feel any urgency to renew the bank. GOP leaders are watching Rep. Jeb
Hensarling’s (R-Texas) Financial Services Committee to see what - if anything - it produces. They’re also eyeing the level of organic support
for renewing the program. “Boehner has been clear that this is an issue that Members, particularly on the Financial Services Committee,
need to discuss - and that is happening,” said Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman. Hensarling is one of the House’s most outspoken critics
Re-authorizing
the bank historically isn’t a heavy lift. In 2012, 330 House members approved the charter - an effort led by
against re-upping the bank’s mandate. He’s compared it to “crony capitalism” and a handout for big business.
Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who lost his primary bid earlier this month. In 2006, it was so noncontroversial that it passed in the House by
But the Republican caucus has grown more conservative since then. Still,
some Republicans are backing the bank. A group of 41 House Republicans wrote to Speaker Boehner and
unanimous consent.
McCarthy on Monday expressing support for the bank.
PC key
Political capital does play a key role in determining the outcome of
legislation
Beckmann & Kumar, 11 --- Department of Poli Sci and UC Irvine (Matthew N. Beckmann
and Vimal Kumar, Journal of Theoretical Politics, “How presidents push, when presidents win: A
model of positive presidential power in US lawmaking,” SAGE Journals Database)
Agreeing that presidents’ strategic options in Congress do indeed depend heavily on factors beyond their control, our
model’s first insight is explicating the two systematic strategies presidents have available for exerting influence
in Congress: they can
target marginal voters to shift the preference distribution
on roll-call votes and they can target congressional leaders to censor the
policy alternatives making it that far. While the first of these is widely recognized and studied, the
second is not. By
detailing the actual mechanisms of president-led coalition
building on Capitol Hill, ours is a theory that puts positive presidential
power on a firmer conceptual footing; legislative opportunities are
predictable (if not controllable) and capitalizing on them depends on
nothing more heroic than the normal grist of legislative politics: armtwisting, brow-beating, and horse-trading. In this way, we subscribe to President
Eisenhower’s observation: ‘I’ll tell you what leadership is: it’s persuasion,
and conciliation, and education, and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work’
(Hughes, 1963: 124). However, if spending
centered strategies is
political capital in the service of vote-centered and agenda-
a necessary condition for presidents to have positive
influence in Congress, it certainly is not a sufficient condition. Instead, we find the exact policy return on a
particular presidential lobbying campaign is conditioned by the location of the status quo, and the nature of leading
opponents’ and pivotal voters’ preferences. Beyond enjoying ample political capital, then, those
presidents
who seek to change far-off status quos and confront pliable leading
opponents and/or pivotal voters are expected to wield the greatest
policymaking impact. By comparison, presidents with little to no political capital,
seeking to change centrist status quos, or confronting opposing leaders
and pivotal voters who staunchly oppose their proposals can find
themselves with ‘nothing to do but stand there and take it’, as Lyndon
Johnson once put it.
Dickinson concludes neg – prefer this evidence because it’s from a
peer reviewed journal and isn’t just a random blog post.
Dickinson, ‘9 (Matthew Dickinson, professor of political science at Middlebury College. He
taught previously at Harvard University, where he also received his Ph.D., working under the
supervision of presidential scholar Richard Neustadt, We All Want a Revolution: Neustadt, New
Institutionalism, and the Future of Presidency Research, Presidential Studies Quarterly 39 no4
736-70)
Small wonder, then, that initial efforts to find evidence of presidential power centered on explaining legislative
outcomes in Congress. Because scholars found it difficult to directly and systematically measure presidential influence
or "skill," however, they often tried to estimate it indirectly, after first establishing a baseline model that explained
these outcomes on other factors, including party strength in Congress, members of Congress's ideology, the
president's electoral support and/or popular approval, and various control variables related to time in office and
political and economic context. With the baseline established, one could then presumably see how much of the
unexplained variance might be attributed to presidents, and whether individual presidents did better or worse than
the model predicted. Despite differences in modeling assumptions and measurements, however, these studies came to
remarkably similar conclusions: individual presidents did not seem to matter very much in explaining legislators'
voting behavior or lawmaking outcomes (but see Lockerbie and Borrelli 1989, 97-106). As Richard Fleisher, Jon Bond,
and B. Dan Wood summarized, "[S]tudies that compare presidential success to some baseline fail to find evidence that
perceptions of skill have systematic effects" (2008, 197; see also Bond, Fleisher, and Krutz 1996, 127; Edwards 1989,
212).
To some scholars, these results indicate that Neustadt's "president-
centered" perspective is incorrect (Bond and Fleisher 1990, 221-23). In fact, the aggregate
results reinforce Neustadt's recurring refrain that presidents are weak and
that, when dealing with Congress, a president's power is "comparably
limited" (Neustadt 1990, 184). The misinterpretation of the findings as they relate to
PP stems in part from
scholars' difficulty in defining and operationalizing
presidential influence (Cameron 2000b; Dietz 2002, 105-6; Edwards 2000, 12; Shull and Shaw 1999). But
it is also that case that scholars often misconstrue Neustadt's analytic perspective; his description of what presidents
must do to influence policy making does not mean that he believes presidents are the dominant influence on that
process. Neustadt writes from the president's perspective, but without adopting a president-centered explanation of
power. Nonetheless, if Neustadt clearly recognizes that a president's influence in Congress is exercised mostly, as
George Edwards (1989) puts it, "at the margins," his case studies in PP also suggest that, within this limited bound,
presidents do strive to influence legislative outcomes. But how? Scholars
often argue that a
president's most direct means of influence is to directly lobby certain
members of Congress, often through quid pro quo exchanges, at critical junctures during
the lawmaking sequence. Spatial models of legislative voting suggest
that these lobbying efforts are most effective when presidents target
the median, veto, and filibuster "pivots" within Congress. This logic finds
empirical support in vote-switching studies that indicate that presidents do
direct lobbying efforts at these pivotal voters, and with positive legislative
results. Keith Krehbiel analyzes successive votes by legislators in the context of a presidential veto
and finds "modest support
for the sometimes doubted stylized fact of presidential power as
persuasion" (1998,153-54). Similarly, David Brady and Craig Volden look at vote
switching by members of Congress in successive Congresses on nearly
identical legislation and also conclude that presidents do influence the
votes of at least some legislators (1998, 125-36). In his study of presidential lobbying on key votes on important
domestic legislation during the 83rd (1953-54) through 108th (2003-04) Congresses, Matthew Beckman
shows that in addition to these pivotal voters, presidents also lobby leaders
in both congressional parties in order to control what legislative
alternatives make it onto the congressional agenda (more on this later). These
lobbying efforts are correlated with a greater likelihood that a president's
legislative preferences will come to a vote (Beckmann 2008, n.d.). In one of the most
concerted efforts to model how bargaining takes place at the individual level, Terry Sullivan
examines
presidential archives containing administrative headcounts to identify
instances in which members of Congress switched positions during
legislative debate, from initially opposing the president to supporting him
in the final roll call (Sullivan 1988, 1990, 1991). Sullivan shows that in a bargaining game with incomplete
information regarding the preferences of the president and members of Congress, there are a number of possible
bargaining outcomes for a given distribution of legislative and presidential policy preferences. These
outcomes depend in part on legislators' success in bartering their potential
support for the president's policy for additional concessions from the
president. In threatening to withhold support, however, members of Congress run the risk that the president will
call their bluff and turn elsewhere for the necessary votes.
By capitalizing on members'
uncertainty regarding whether their support is necessary to form a winning
coalition, Sullivan theorizes that presidents can reduce members of
Congress's penchant for strategic bluffing and increase the likelihood of a
legislative outcome closer to the president's preference. “Hence, the skill to
bargain successfully becomes a foundation for presidential power even
within the context of electorally determined opportunities,” Sullivan concludes (1991,
1188).
AT Winners Win
PC finite- legislative wins don’t spillover --- empirics prove, true for
Obama, too polarized
Eberly 1/21 Todd Eberly is coordinator of Public Policy Studies and assistant professor in the
Department of Political Science at St. Mary's College of Maryland. His email is
teeberly@smcm.edu. This article is excerpted from his book, co-authored with Steven Schier,
"American Government and Popular Discontent: Stability without Success," to published later
this year by Routledge Press., 1-21-2013 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-01-21/news/bsed-political-capital-20130121_1_political-system-party-support-public-opinion/2
As Barack Obama prepares to be sworn in for the second time as president of the United States,
he faces the stark reality that
little of what he hopes to accomplish in a second
term will likely come to pass . Mr. Obama occupies an office that many assume to
be all powerful, but like so many of his recent predecessors, the president knows better. He
faces a political capital problem and a power trap.¶ In the post-1960s American political
system, presidents have found the exercise of effective leadership a difficult task. To
lead well, a president needs support — or at least permission — from federal courts and
Congress; steady allegiance from public opinion and fellow partisans in the electorate; backing
from powerful, entrenched interest groups; and accordance with contemporary public opinion
about the proper size and scope of government. This is a long list of requirements. If presidents
fail to satisfy these requirements, they face the prospect of inadequate political support
or political capital to back their power assertions.¶ What was so crucial about the 1960s?
We can trace so much of what defines contemporary politics to trends that emerged then.
Americans' confidence in government began a precipitous decline as the tumult and tragedies of
the 1960s gave way to the scandals and economic uncertainties of the 1970s. Long-standing party
coalitions began to fray as the New Deal coalition, which had elected Franklin Roosevelt to four
terms and made Democrats the indisputable majority party, faded into history. The election of
Richard Nixon in 1968 marked the beginning of an unprecedented era of divided government.
Finally, the two parties began ideologically divergent journeys that resulted in intense
polarization in Congress, diminishing the possibility of bipartisan compromise. These
changes, combined with the growing influence of money and interest groups and the steady
"thickening" of the federal bureaucracy, introduced significant challenges to presidential
leadership.¶ Political capital can best be understood as a combination of the president's party
support in Congress, public approval of his job performance, and the president's electoral victory
margin. The components of political capital are central to the fate of presidencies. It is difficult to
claim warrants for leadership in an era when job approval, congressional support and partisan
affiliation provide less backing for a president than in times past. In recent years,
presidents' political capital has shrunk while their power assertions
have grown, making the president a volatile player in the national political system.¶ Jimmy
Carter and George H.W. Bush joined the small ranks of incumbents defeated while seeking a
second term. Ronald Reagan was elected in two landslides, yet his most successful year for
domestic policy was his first year in office. Bill Clinton was twice elected by a comfortable margin,
but with less than majority support, and despite a strong economy during his second term, his
greatest legislative successes came during his first year with the passage of a controversial but
crucial budget bill, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the North American Free Trade
Agreement. George W. Bush won election in 2000 having lost the popular vote, and though his
impact on national security policy after the Sept. 11 attacks was far reaching, his greatest domestic
policy successes came during 2001. Ambitious plans for Social Security reform, following his
narrow re-election in 2004, went nowhere.¶ Faced with obstacles to successful leadership, recent
presidents have come to rely more on their formal powers. The number of important executive
orders has increased significantly since the 1960s, as have the issuance of presidential signing
statements. Both are used by presidents in an attempt to shape and direct policy on their terms.
Presidents have had to rely more on recess appointments as well, appointing individuals to
important positions during a congressional recess (even a weekend recess) to avoid delays and
obstruction often encountered in the Senate. Such power assertions typically elicit close media
scrutiny and often further erode political capital.¶ Barack Obama's election in 2008 seemed to
signal a change. Mr. Obama's popular vote majority was the largest for any president since 1988,
and he was the first Democrat to clear the 50 percent mark since Lyndon Johnson. The president
initially enjoyed strong public approval and, with a Democratic Congress, was able to produce an
impressive string of legislative accomplishments during his first year and early into his second,
capped by enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But with each legislative
battle and success, his political capital waned. His impressive successes with Congress in 2009
and 2010 were accompanied by a shift in the public mood against him, evident in the rise of the
tea party movement, the collapse in his approval rating, and the large GOP gains in the 2010
elections, which brought a return to divided government.¶ By mid-2011, Mr. Obama's job approval
had slipped well below its initial levels, and Congress was proving increasingly intransigent. In
the face of declining public support and rising congressional opposition, Mr. Obama, like his
predecessors, looked to the energetic use of executive power. In 2012, the president relied on
executive discretion and legal ambiguity to allow homeowners to more easily refinance federally
backed mortgages, to help veterans find employment and to make it easier for college graduates
to consolidate federal student loan debt. He issued several executive orders effecting change in
the nation's enforcement of existing immigration laws. He used an executive order to authorize
the Department of Education to grant states waivers from the requirements of the No Child Left
Behind Act — though the enacting legislation makes no accommodation for such waivers.
Contrary to the outcry from partisan opponents, Mr. Obama's actions were hardly unprecedented
or imperial. Rather, they represented a rather typical power assertion from a contemporary
president.¶ Many looked to the 2012 election as a means to break present trends. But Barack
Obama's narrow re-election victory, coupled with the re-election of a somewhat-diminished
Republican majority House and Democratic majority Senate, hardly signals a grand
resurgence of his political capital. The president's recent issuance of multiple executive
orders to deal with the issue of gun violence is further evidence of his power trap. Faced with the
likelihood of legislative defeat in Congress, the president must rely on claims of unilateral power.
But such claims are not without limit or cost and will likely further erode his political capital. ¶
Only by solving the problem of political capital is a president likely to avoid a power trap.
Presidents in recent years have been unable to prevent their political
capital from eroding . When it did, their power assertions often got them into further
political trouble. Through leveraging public support, presidents have at times been able to
overcome contemporary leadership challenges by adopting as their own issues that the public
already supports. Bill Clinton's centrist "triangulation" and George W. Bush's careful issue
selection early in his presidency allowed them to secure important policy changes — in Mr.
Clinton's case, welfare reform and budget balance, in Mr. Bush's tax cuts and education reform —
that at the time received popular approval.¶ However, short-term legislative strategies may
win policy success for a president but do not serve as an antidote to declining
political capital over time, as the difficult final years of both the Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush presidencies demonstrate. None of Barack Obama's recent predecessors solved the
political capital problem or avoided the power trap. It is the central political challenge
confronted by modern presidents and one that will likely weigh heavily on the current
president's mind today as he takes his second oath of office.
Winners win is wrong
Jackie Calmes, "In Debt Talks, Obama Is Ready to Go Beyond Beltway," NEW YORK TIMES,
11--12--12, LN.
That story line, stoked by Republicans but shared by some Democrats, holds that Mr.
Obama is too passive and deferential to Congress, a legislative naïf who does little to
nurture personal relationships with potential allies - in short, not a particularly strong leader.
Even as voters re-elected Mr. Obama, those who said in surveys afterward that strong leadership
was the most important quality for a president overwhelmingly chose Mr. Romney. George C.
Edwards III, a leading scholar of the presidency at Texas A & M University who is
currently teaching at Oxford University, dismissed such criticisms as shallow and
generally wrong. Yet Mr. Edwards, whose book on Mr. Obama's presidency is titled
"Overreach," said, "He didn't understand the limits of what he could do." "They
thought they could continuously create opportunities and they would succeed,
and then there would be more success and more success, and we'd build this
advancing-tide theory of legislation," Mr. Edwards said. "And that was very naïve,
very silly. Well, they've learned a lot, I think." "Effective leaders," he added, "exploit
opportunities rather than create them." The budget showdown is an opportunity.
But like many, it holds risks as well as potential rewards. "This election is the second chance to
be what he promised in 2008, and that is to break the gridlock in Washington," said Kenneth M.
Duberstein, a Reagan White House chief of staff, who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and later
expressed disappointment. "But it seems like this is a replay of 2009 and 2010, when he had huge
majorities in the House and Senate, rather than recognizing that 'we've got to figure out ways to
work together and it's not just what I want.' " For now, at least, Republican lawmakers say they
may be open to raising the tax bill for some earners. "We can increase revenue without increasing
the tax rates on anybody in this country," said Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia
and a leader of House conservatives, on "Fox News Sunday." "We can lower the rates, broaden the
base, close the loopholes." The challenge for Mr. Obama is to use his postelection
leverage to persuade Republicans - or to help Speaker John A. Boehner persuade
Republicans - that a tax compromise is in their party's political interest since most
Americans favor compromise and higher taxes on the wealthy to reduce annual deficits. Some of
the business leaders the president will meet with on Wednesday are members of the new Fix the
Debt coalition, which has raised about $40 million to urge lawmakers and their constituents to
support a plan that combines spending cuts with new revenue. That session will follow Mr.
Obama's meeting with labor leaders on Tuesday. His first trip outside Washington to engage the
public will come after Thanksgiving, since Mr. Obama is scheduled to leave next weekend on a
diplomatic trip to Asia. Travel plans are still sketchy, partly because his December calendar is full
of the traditional holiday parties. Democrats said the White House's strategy of focusing both
inside and outside of Washington was smart. "You want to avoid getting sucked into the Beltway
inside-baseball games," said Joel Johnson, a former adviser in the Clinton White House and the
Senate. "You can still work toward solutions, but make sure you get out of Washington while you
are doing that." The president must use his leverage soon, some Democrats added,
because it could quickly wane as Republicans look to the 2014 midterm elections, when the
opposition typically takes seats from the president's party in Congress.
Ex-Im Good
Airline
Failure to reauthorize dooms US Airline industry
Memoli and Puzzanghera 6/24
Michael A. Memoli has worked in the Los Angeles Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau since 2010,
and now spends most of his time in the halls of the Capitol covering Congress.Jim Puzzanghera
writes about business and economic issues from the Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau. “Shift in
GOP leadership leaves Export-Import Bank at risk of closing”
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-export-import-bank-20140625-story.html#page=1
Boeing said it would be at a competitive disadvantage without the bank because its
main competitor, Airbus Group in Leiden, the Netherlands, has the support of export
finance agencies in France, Germany and Britain.¶ "The airplane market is highly
competitive, and every deal is won or lost by the slightest of margins," said Boeing
spokesman John Kvasnosky. "Any uncertainty in financing availability could
unnecessarily tilt the field against Boeing, putting thousands of manufacturing
jobs at risk."
Boeing is key to restoring US aviation leadership—which is
independently key to the US economy
Crandall 8
Robert, Former Chairman and CEO of American Airlines, @ the Carmichael Conference, "Text of
Major Address by Robert Crandall,former Chairman and CEO of American AirlinesTo the
Carmichael Conference, St. Louis",
http://www.nationalcorridors.org/conferencearchive/conf0108-02.shtml
Thus, while most who opposed deregulation would acknowledge that competitive freedom has brought many benefits to an industry that certainly needed
changing, I am sure many would share with me some sense of vindication from the headlines and stories so frequent in today’s press. Consider these few
During the first nine months of 2007, the airline industry lost – at least
temporarily – one of every 138 checked bags, as compared to one of every 155 the year before and far fewer ten years
ago. At one of our leading airlines, the number of involuntarily bumped passengers
– that is, people denied boarding despite having a reservation – rose by 50%
examples:
in the summer of 2007 as compared to the summer of 2006. Industry wide, involuntary bumping was 22%
worse than last summer. Airline on-time arrivals have fallen to less than 75%, and the number of delayed flights has risen by more than 600,000 from ten years ago. At some major airports – particularly Kennedy and Laguardia – the numbers
are far worse On November 25, an article in the New York Times proclaimed “flying … has become an increasingly miserable experience. Legroom is practically nonexistent. Passengers are more tightly packed together. Hot meals have been
finally, and in the long
run most importantly, U.S. Aviation leadership is a thing of the past. While both
Boeing and airbus are building and selling lots of new planes, the fleets of the
major U.S. Carriers are growing steadily older. It has been many years since any
U.S. Airline has warranted a place on any list of the world’s best airlines. The
industry’s impact on our collective well-being is profound. Numerous studies
have shown that aviation accounts for more than a trillion dollars – 10% plus – of
our GDP and drives about 11 million jobs. Taken together with the economic implications of inadequate rail and highway
eliminated. Ditto pillows and blankets. All of which has created a generation of fliers who now view getting on a plane as roughly akin to entering the ninth circle of hell. And
structures, these numbers imply ever-deepening troubles ahead.
Aviation leadership is key to the economy
Douglass 6
John W., CEO and President of the Aerospace Industries Association of America, in front of
Senate Appropriations Committee, www.ieeeusa.org/policy/POLICY/2006/071106b.pdf
Maintaining U.S. aviation leadership is critical to our nation's economic health.
Aerospace provides our nation's largest trade surplus ($40 billion in 2005) and employs
more than 612,000 workers across the U.S. We need to recognize the importance of this industry to our national
economy by placing renewed emphasis on aeronautics research at NASA.
Airline industry is crucial to the US economy
Cambell 6 – Hill, CAMBELL 06, The Campbell Hill Aviation Group, Aviation and Research
Consultants, “CommercialAviation and the American Economy,” March 2006,
http://www.smartskies.org/NR/rdonlyres/E20C3048-9FD4-46D8-91F16303C4148C5A/0/CommercialAviationEconomyMar06.pdf
The U.S. civil aviation sector (including air transportation, related manufacturing
and air-based travel and tourism) wascollectively responsible for $1.37 trillion of national
output in 2004, supporting 812.3 million U.S. employees and $418billion in personal
earnings. Commercial aviation accounts for the majority of this impact with $1.2 trillion in output,$380
billion in earnings and 11.4 million jobs. U.S. Civil Aviation Economic Impact (2004) Commercial AviationGeneral AviationTotalOutput(Billion$)1,2471181,365Earnings(Billion
The national economy is highly dependent on commercial
aviation, which, in 2004, was directly orindirectly responsible for 5.8 percent of
gross output (i.e., economic activity), 5.0 percent of personal earnings and
8.8percent of national employment. Commercial Aviation Impact as Share of U.S. Economy (2004) 8.8% 5.0% 5.8%
$)38038418Employment(000)11,393 956 12,349
Employment Personal Earnings Gross OutputThe direct impact of commercial air transportation and related industries in 2004 was estimated at $247 billion in
gross output, $72 billion in earnings and over a million jobs.Commercial air transportation was the primary source of direct impacts, with $130 billion of output,
followed by aircraft and related manufacturing ($75 billion), air expresscouriers ($24 billion) and air transportation support goods and services ($18 billion).The
indirect impact of expenditures by commercial air travelers creates an additional $191billion of gross output, $67 billion of earnings and 3.3 million jobs. The
lodging and food industries account for more than half of the total output impact, with retail shopping,recreation and entertainment and ground transportation
spending also top-impact sectors. The direct and indirect impacts of commercial aviation generate additional “induced”impacts as industry revenues and employee
earnings are used to purchase goods and services from other industries. The service sector accounts for nearly half of the $1.25 trillionin total national impact, both
through travel and tourism services and support to both direct and indirect impact industries. 1 The total impact of commercial aviation is comparedto national
aggregates of Gross Output and Personal Earnings (from the Bureau of Economic Accounts) and Total Covered Employment (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics)
for the 50 states and the District of Columbia combined. Commercial Aviation Total Impacts = $1.25 Trillion of U.S. Economic Activity Transportation &
Warehousing 18%Manufacturing 20% Services 47% Trade 11% All Other 4% The distribution of national impacts by state was determined by the location of
airports, tourist destinations, businesstravel centers and aviation-related manufacturing plants, as well as the location of industries supporting the direct and
indirect impact industries. California was the top-impactstate, with $203 billion of gross output impacts, followed by Texas, Florida, Georgia and New York. Top
Five States in Total Impact (Billion $) $202.6 $126.9 $93.6 $72.7 $59.5California Texas Florida Georgia New York The distribution of impacts by congressional
district was similarly based on local industrial patterns, with the top districts being either tourist destinations (Hawaii and Las Vegas area) or top
aviation manufacturing centers (Western Washington). Top Five Congressional Districts in Total Impact (Billion $) $9.6$8.9 $8.7 $8.2 $7.8 District 1, Hawaii
District 2, Hawaii District 3, Nevada District 8, Washington District 1, Nevada ii Introduction This report summarizes the estimated impactof commercial aviation
on individual U.S congressional districts in 2004. The impact estimates are based on a model that allocates national and state-level impacts derived
usingsecondary economic and transportation data sources of the federal government. 2 The district-level estimates use Census of Population employment data for
2000 as allocated tothe 109 th congressional districts. The following describes the general concepts and methodologies used to measure the economic impact of the
U.S. civil aviation sector, and provides summary results at the national, state and district level. Appendix A provides a detailed description of the impact
methodologies. Appendices B and C summarize theresults at the state and congressional district levels, respectively. National Economic Impact of U.S. Civil
Aviation The economic impact of any particular industry sector can bemeasured by the output, earnings and employment associated with that sector, plus any
“induced” (or supporting) economic activity that results from any purchases made by thatsector’s firms and its employees. Total economic impacts of an industry
combine both the first-level impacts (as related to the industry’s sales, revenue or output) and inducedimpacts (as related to purchases required to “produce” the
sales or output and household spending by the industry’s employees). Civil aviation is a vital component of the U.S. passenger and cargo transportation sector and
combines commercial and general aviation activities. The air transportation sector supports the travel and tourism industries, and issupported by the aircraft
manufacturing sector. Each of these sectors also requires supporting goods, services and labor. The relative impact of civil aviation depends both on
theabsolute demand for the output from these sectors, as well as the interdependence between those sectors and other U.S. industries. The primary impacts of
commercial aviationon the U.S. economy are related to: (1) airlines and supporting services (commercial and non-commercial) (2) aircraft, engines and parts
manufacturing (3) air-visitor travel andother trip-related expenditures The first two sectors (air transportation and aircraft manufacturing) create direct impacts
through the production of air transportation services; thevisitor-related expenditures constitute an indirect impact that results from the primary transport activity.
All of these sectors are directly affected andsupported by the U.S. civil aviation
system, consisting of airports, airspace and supporting infrastructure. Directimpacts of civil
aviation are created through transportation and other activities at airports as measured by theemployment, payroll and sales/output associated with the following
industries/entities: Scheduled and non-scheduledcommercial airlines (passenger and cargo) and air couriers Airport and aircraft service providers (including FAA
andother government services) Air cargo service providers General aviation (non-commercial) aircraft operators(including flight schools) 2 These results were
based on methodologies similar to those developed in previous nationalimpact studies by the Federal Aviation Administration and other industry
The induced impacts of commercial aviation in 2004 are estimated at
$808 billion in output, $241 billion in earnings and 7.0 million jobs. Mostof these
groups. [continues]
induced impacts are attributed to the service sector, with the manufacturing and trade sectors also significantlyimpacted
[continues] The
commercial aviation sector has a significant impact on the U.S.
economy, based on airtransportation and airport services, manufacturing of air
transportation equipment and travel and tourism expendituresby air passengers.
Including induced impacts, the U.S. commercial aviation sector drove $1.2
trillion in economicactivity (5.8 percent of U.S. total), $380 billion in earnings
(5.0 percent) and 11.4 million jobs (8.8 percent). 14 Thedirect impact of
commercial air transportation and related industries was estimated at $247
billion in gross output, $72billion in earnings and over one million jobs, with
commercial air transportation accounting for approximately half of the output
impact. Commercial air-traveler expenditures created indirect impacts including
$191 billion of gross output,$67 billion of earnings and 3.3 million jobs, mostly for the accommodations and food service
sectors. The nationalimpact of commercial aviation extends to every congressional district and the District of Columbia. California was thetop-impact state, with
$203 billion of gross output impacts followed by Texas, Florida, Georgia and New York. The top congressional districts are either major tourist destinations
(Hawaii and Las Vegas area) or top aviation-manufacturingcenters (Western Washington), although every district has a significant level of impact.
Airlines makes up the largest sector of economy
Kelly 8 – Gary, KELLY 08, Chief Executive Officer of Southwest Airlines, CEOpinion: Airline
Inudstry Very Fuel-Efficient, http://www.thecro.com/node/620
The problem of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the resulting climate change is one that faces all of us—as individuals, but also as
corporations. The backbone of the aviation industry is helping individuals go, see and do in a time-effective manner. If we don’t address the
problem of GHG emissions, there will not be natural places to go, a world to see or things to do. We, as an industry, are highly motivated to
preserve the natural world around us. Southwest Airlines and the entire airline industry have a great story to tell about improving fuel
efficiency and reducing GHG emissions. Compared to other industries, and even other modes of transportation, the airline industry is
incredibly fuel-efficient and continues to improve efficiency with investments in new technology and by adopting new operational
procedures. We are driven to be as fuel efficient as possible because, not only is it the right thing to do, frankly, it’s good business. Fuel
accounts for an incredibly large portion of any airline’s operating costs. And thus, we have every reason in the world to be as fuel (and
carbon) efficient as possible. We are constantly searching for ways to reduce our fuel costs. When we reduce our fuel consumption, we help
.
According to a recent study, “Commercial Aviation and the American Economy,”
the airline industry, which includes both passenger and cargo carriers, is a major
driver of economic activity, especially in the United States, where the airline
industry is directly responsible for 5.8 percent of gross economic output and 8.8
percent of national employment. Despite our role in being a major generator of economic activity, airlines account
both the environment and our bottom line. Any government solution to climate change should leverage this economic reality
for only about 2 percent of GHG emissions in the United States and 3 percent worldwide. Again, the airline industry delivers more value to
the economy while maintaining a low carbon footprint because we are constantly improving our fuel efficiency. The industry has already
contributed to the reduction of emissions through technology and efficiency. The industry has improved its fuel efficiency—and hence GHG
efficiency—by 103 percent between 1978 and 2006.
Competitiveness
Export credit is NECESSARY to secure US competitiveness
ITIF 12
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation “The Export-Import Bank Works For America:
Responses to 18 Arguments for Cutting Ex-Im’s Authorization” INNOVATION FACT SHEET: EXIM BANK, 2012, http://www2.itif.org/2012-ex-im-bank.pdf
The United States is falling behind in global economic competition,
with the result being lost jobs and a rising trade deficit . One reason for this fall is
that international trade has become much more competitive. U.S.
enterprises are up against formidable competitors, many of them receiving
significant support from their governments as they seek to win in the race for
economic advantage and the jobs that go with it.¶ One key factor in this competitive race is
export financing. Foreign competitors enjoy substantial and growing support from
their countries’ export credit agencies (ECAs). Indeed, many of the United States’ strongest international trade competitors
invest significantly more in export credit assistance as a share of both GDP and exports than the United States does. With the temporary
reauthorization of the U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank set to expire on May 31, 2012 and as the U.S. Congress looks to reauthorize the
Bank for a new five-year term, some free-market or libertarian organizations (e.g., Cato Institute, Club for Growth, Citizens for Limited
Government, etc.) have been arguing against reauthorization, making a number of claims about why Ex-Im is not needed. Most of these
arguments are not grounded in analysis, but rather are ideological in nature, based on faulty theories and assumptions about markets,
globalization, competitiveness and trade. Here is a brief list of the common arguments made by Ex-Im opponents and why they are wrong.
Reauthorization now is critical to maintain US competitiveness
ITIF 12
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation “The Export-Import Bank Works For America:
Responses to 18 Arguments for Cutting Ex-Im’s Authorization” INNOVATION FACT SHEET: EXIM BANK, 2012, http://www2.itif.org/2012-ex-im-bank.pdf
18) “Government export finance assistance programs may largely shift production among sectors within the economy rather than raise the
overall level of employment in the economy.”22 First of all, sectors matter (See #3 and #10.) Second, timing matters. As Keynes famously
stated, “in the long run we are all dead.” That statement is true but it has long given economists an easy out on weighing in on the short and
loss of export competitiveness does have
macroeconomic employment impacts at least for the short and medium-term. It should be
medium term realities. In the world of reality,
no surprise that in a decade when the United States lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs (the 2000s) that there was no net new job
The two are related. In fact, of 10 countries examined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was a 0.57 correlation between
Ex-Im financing helped companies export and this
had no effect on the overall number of jobs (which is wrong), it does have an effect on the composition of
jobs, leading to more higher-value-added, higher-wage jobs. Conclusion Having a
strong export economy is critical to the performance of the U.S.
economy . Competition from foreign export credit agencies is not abating—in fact it is
increasing. The stakes to our nation’s economic future are too high to let this critical debate over Ex-Im be determined on the basis
of ideology about the proper role of government. It is clearly the proper role of government to help U.S. businesses win
the fight they are in for global competitive advantage. As such, Congress should
reauthorize the U.S. Export-Import Bank.
growth.
change in manufacturing employment and overall growth of jobs. Moreover, even if
Ex-Im bank key to growth and competiveness
Mulvaney 6/27
Sean Mulvaney, member of board of director of Ex-Im bank and served as director of Economic
Policy Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, “Enabling Export Credit to
Support Growth: The Role of the Export-Import Bank of the United States”,
http://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/2014/06/27/enabling-export-credit-to-support-growththe-role-of-the-export-import-bank-of--a-523467.html#.U6-WMfldX9M //SQR
US trade with the rest of the world, whether through exports or imports, is an essential thread
woven throughout the fabric of the US economy. Such trade is a key source of
growth and competitiveness for the American companies as well as of boosting the quality of life for American
citizens. Going forward, a critical task for the United States is how we leverage the prosperity beyond our borders into more growth and
prosperity here at home. It will not simply just happen. Moreover, it will not be the responsibility of just a few large US companies.
Increasingly, US small and medium sized enterprises (typically companies with 500 employees or
less) need to engage in international trade. With 95% of the world's consumers living outside our borders, more
US companies must look abroad. Of the US's 30 million companies, only 1%, or 280,000 companies, export and of those, 58% export to
only one market. To engage successfully in cross-border trade, US companies must: * Develop cross-cultural skill sets in sales, marketing
and customer service. * Learn how to transport goods efficiently around the world. * Acquire more knowledge of the various methods for
receiving foreign payment or extending credit internationally. How Can NACM/FCIB Members Leverage the Export-Import Bank for
Overseas Sales? In the areas of preand post-export finance, the ExportImport Bank of the United States (Ex-Im) can play a support role to
Ex-Im can help US
companies secure working capital, mitigate foreign buyer payment risk or provide assistance to facilitate
credit to foreign buyers. For many US exporters, this assistance can make
a difference. When asked about the largest obstacle when selling overseas, 41%
of US exporters worry about getting paid, according to a 2013 survey conducted by the National Small
Business Association and the Small Business Exporters Association. As some readers may know, Ex-Im is the official export credit
agency of the US government. The agency is selfsustaining, meaning it does not require a taxpayer appropriation of resources.
US exporters. Guided by specific parameters as authorized by Congress and the President,
Fees are charged to cover its administrative and program expenses. Reserves are set aside to cover losses should Ex-Im incur a default on its
credit activities. As it implements its programs, Ex-Im aims to supplement and not compete with private sector trade finance. For 80 years,
Ex-Im's mission has been to support US exports and US jobs. The Bank's purpose is twofold. First, the Bank seeks to
ensure a level playing field for US exports in the global marketplace by attempting to make
sure that buyer decisions are based on price and quality, not state-sponsored financing. Approximately 60 countries around
the world have official export credit agencies that operate with the intent of supporting their national
exporters and exports. Without Ex-Im, US exporters would not have a defensive tool to
combat foreign ECA supported competition.
Economy
Failure to reauthorize wrecks the economy – depresses dollar,
decreases exports, and cuts high wage jobs
ITIF 12
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation “The Export-Import Bank Works For America:
Responses to 18 Arguments for Cutting Ex-Im’s Authorization” INNOVATION FACT SHEET: EXIM BANK, 2012, http://www2.itif.org/2012-ex-im-bank.pdf
6) Our Congressional Scorecard for the 112th Congress provides a comprehensive rating of how well or how poorly each
Member of Congress supports pro-growth, free-market policies, and will be distributed to our members and to the
public.6¶ While shutting
down Ex-Im may be a “free-market policy” it is not a “pro-growth policy” since it will
lead to fewer exports, a lower value of the dollar (meaning lower purchasing power for U.S.
consumers) and lower-wage jobs. This is in part because jobs in exporting industries pay
more than other jobs in non-exporting industries. Free market and pro-growth are not always
synonymous (see #4.)¶ And in fact, when the term “free market” is bandied about without acknowledging that global
markets aren’t idyllically “free,” bur rather that they are readily characterized by the intentionally distortive mercantilist
policies of foreign governments (not to mention the legitimate policies countries undertake to support their enterprises)
then not only is a blindly “free market policy” not a “pro-growth policy,” it
is a sure-fire recipe for the U.S.
losing exports, market share, and employment in key traded sector industries.
The macroeconomic implications are significant and the impact
timeframe is short
ITIF 12
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation “The Export-Import Bank Works For America:
Responses to 18 Arguments for Cutting Ex-Im’s Authorization” INNOVATION FACT SHEET: EXIM BANK, 2012, http://www2.itif.org/2012-ex-im-bank.pdf
18) “Government export finance assistance programs may largely shift production among sectors within the economy rather than raise the
overall level of employment in the economy.”22 First of all, sectors matter (See #3 and #10.) Second, timing matters. As Keynes famously
stated, “in the long run we are all dead.” That statement is true but it has long given economists an easy out on weighing in on the short and
loss of export competitiveness does have
macroeconomic employment impacts at least for the short and medium-term. It should be
medium term realities. In the world of reality,
no surprise that in a decade when the United States lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs (the 2000s) that there was no net new job
The two are related. In fact, of 10 countries examined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was a 0.57 correlation between
change in manufacturing employment and overall growth of jobs. Moreover, even if Ex-Im financing helped companies export and this
had no effect on the overall number of jobs (which is wrong), it does have an effect on the composition of
jobs, leading to more higher-value-added, higher-wage jobs. Conclusion Having a
strong export economy is critical to the performance of the U.S.
economy . Competition from foreign export credit agencies is not abating—in fact it is
increasing. The stakes to our nation’s economic future are too high to let this critical debate over Ex-Im be determined on the basis
of ideology about the proper role of government. It is clearly the proper role of government to help U.S. businesses win
the fight they are in for global competitive advantage. As such, Congress should
reauthorize the U.S. Export-Import Bank.
growth.
Bank finance is necessary for growth
Mulvaney 6/27
Sean Mulvaney, member of board of director of Ex-Im bank and served as director of Economic
Policy Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, “Enabling Export Credit to
Support Growth: The Role of the Export-Import Bank of the United States”,
http://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/2014/06/27/enabling-export-credit-to-support-growththe-role-of-the-export-import-bank-of--a-523467.html#.U6-WMfldX9M//SQR
Ex-Im aims to fill trade finance gaps the private
sector is unable or unwilling to provide. To implement the mission, Ex-Im uses a variety of products such
as insurance, guarantees and direct lending which span a spectrum of preand post-export credit needs. In FY 2013, Ex-Im
generated $27 billion in credit authorizations supporting $37 billion in US
exports and over 200,000 American jobs. Ex-Im Working Capital Guarantees Can Maximize Borrowing
What's keeping your clients up at night? And second,
Potential Dependable sources of working capital can be critical for a company's financial stability and expansion. Private lenders are often
unwilling to finance the working capital needs of US companies if the output is destined for overseas customers because of the perceived
Ex-Im's working capital program assists in obtaining loans to produce goods or services for
provide
businesses with the liquidity to accept new business, grow international sales and
compete more effectively in the global marketplace. Such facilities can also be used by exporters to post
foreign payment risk.
export. The working capital facilities, financed by commercial lenders and backed by an Ex-Im Bank's guarantee,
standby letters of credit when foreign buyers request bid or performance bonds. Ex-Im partners with 35-40 commercial banks to improve
access to credit and will assume 90% of the lender's credit risk to help US exporters secure access to financing. In 2013, Ex-Im issued in
$2.6 billion credit authorizations to support the export based working capital needs of US small, medium and large businesses.
Exports
Ex-Im financing is necessary for US exports
Talton 6/28
Jon Talton, June 28th, 2014, “Export-Import Bank Succeeds”,
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023936324_biztaltoncol29xml.html?syndica
tion=rss//SQR
The Ex-Im Bank was established in 1934 by Franklin Roosevelt and helps finance about 2 percent of U.S. exports. This is an
important 2 percent, representing deals that couldn’t otherwise find financing in a timely manner. Specifically, the bank makes and
In fiscal 2012, it backed $50 billion in American
exports, supporting 255,000 jobs. The default rate is low. And while the “Bank of Boeing” is important to some big
players — Caterpillar and GE, too — it also provided financing for 3,400 American companies of all
sizes. At least 59 other government credit agencies exist around the world to help
those nations’ exports, so Ex-Im is hardly unique. Indeed, it is an essential backstop for
American exports — and jobs in the state of Washington. Nor is it the drain on taxpayers that critics claim. The
bank says it earned $1 billion in fees in 2013. According to the accounting rules set by Congress, Ex-Im
would save the government $14 billion over 10 years. Exports are a proven method for growing local
guarantees loans to foreign buyers of U.S. products.
businesses and creating good jobs. In the last seven years, Wisconsin manufacturing exports grew three times as fast as the rest of the
economy. These exports aren’t just heavy equipment, but also include food, paper and vehicles. Private companies invest heavily and take
risks to develop export markets, and this work is supported by government agencies at all levels. The Wisconsin Economic Development
Corporation organizes trade ventures to help business-owners make connections in new markets. The Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension
Partnership hosts the ExportTech workshop series that walks business-owners through the process of creating and implementing export
plans. But knowledge only goes so far. Often, the lack of available financing is where export deals fall apart.
Trade Leadership
Ex-Im financing is necessary to shore up US trade leadership
ITIF 12
Information Technology & Innovation Foundation “The Export-Import Bank Works For America:
Responses to 18 Arguments for Cutting Ex-Im’s Authorization” INNOVATION FACT SHEET: EXIM BANK, 2012, http://www2.itif.org/2012-ex-im-bank.pdf
12) While the administration argues that we need to increase funding for Ex-Im to match increased export credit activity by countries such
as China, allowing Beijing to set the terms and pace of export credit policy in the United States is foolhardy at best.14 We may not like the
fact that Beijing is setting the terms and pace of export financing policy but it does. This would have been akin to saying during the Cold
War, “to let Moscow set the terms and pace of military spending in the United States is foolhardy at best.” Moreover, as #13 explains,
it’s
not like China is the only country that aggressively uses export financing. (Although
China does go further than most countries by often condition their dispersal of foreign aid to countries to those countries purchasing
Chinese exports, with China’s Eximbank providing the export credit financing for those transaction). As such, the United States really has
only three choices: 1) Unilateral disarmament; 2)
Expansion on Ex-Im financing to try to level the
playing field; or 3) Globally binding treaties limiting export financing. The first option would result in an even greater loss of U.S.
traded sector (and manufacturing) capacity than has already been the case. The third might be the ideal policy, but it won’t happen anytime
soon and the odds of it happening if the United States unilaterally disarms first are close to zero. The second
is the only viable
policy choice now. 13) In any case, the idea that the United States suffers from a prohibitively tilted playing field is
questionable.15 A key argument for the Ex-Im Bank is that firms in the United States face an un-level playing
field when it comes to trade. It’s hard to see how anti-Bank advocates can make this claim when the U.S. corporate tax
rate is the highest in the world, other nations manipulate their currency, have more closed markets and provide much higher subsidies.
when looking only at export financing, the U
S
badly trails many nations
Even
nited tates
,
including Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, and India in new medium- and long-term official export credit volumes as a share of GDP. In
fact, in 2010, Brazil’s and China’s export-import banks provided ten times more financing to their exporters as a share of GDP than the U.S.
Ex-Im Bank provided to its. France and India both provided at least seven times more export assistance as a share of GDP than the United
States did in 2010. In 2011, Germany invested almost as much in export credit financing, about $29 billion, as the United States did, $32.7
billion, despite the fact their economy is one-quarter the size of America’s.
Gulf Coast Economy
Failure to reauthorize wrecks Louisiana’s economy ¶
Larino 6/25
Jennifer Larino, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune “Louisiana business leaders oppose House
Republicans' push to close Ex-Im Bank” June 25, 2014¶
http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2014/06/louisiana_business_leaders_opp.html¶
As House Republicans ramp up calls to close the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Louisiana business leaders Wednesday (June
25) came out in support of the institution, which they say is a vital source of financing for the state's export industry.¶ The
Ex-Im Bank, which has received bipartisan support in Congress since it was created in 1934, has become the latest
flashpoint for House GOP members after recent leadership changes.¶ The bank finances and insures the sale of U.S. goods
to international buyers, a role supporters say is critical for American exporters to be competitive.¶ But critics say the
bank's loans are veiled corporate welfare and have waged a campaign to allow the bank's charter to expire in September,
effectively shutting it down. They argue the private sector should be financing business deals, not the federal government.¶
The Obama administration, which is seeking a five-year extension to the charter and an increase in the amount it can lend,
opposes that view.¶ In a letter to the Louisiana congressional delegation, a coalition of state business leaders sided with
the administration in urging reauthorization of the bank, noting that it provides essential loan, loan guarantees and export
credit insurance "to help cover financing gaps for American exporters."¶ Louisiana
shipped more than
$63 billion in goods to other countries in 2013, more exports per capita than any
other state.¶ Michael Hecht, president and CEO of regional economic development group Greater New Orleans Inc.,
said Louisiana's role as a top exporter depends on a functioning Ex-Im
Bank. ¶ "Reauthorization of Ex-Im is a critical action Congress must take to ensure
continued export growth and job creation in Louisiana," Hecht said in a written statement.¶
The future of Ex-Im was thrown into question Sunday when House Majority Leader-elect Kevin McCarthy of California
told media that he was in favor of defunding the bank.¶ A Wall Street Journal report Monday cast a further shadow,
detailing ongoing corruption investigations into four Ex-Im officials.¶ Local business leaders voiced their support for the
institution in the hours before Ex-Im Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg was set to testify before the House
Committee on Financial Services Committee on Wednesday afternoon.¶ According to the letter, Ex-Im Bank has
provided financing for or otherwise backed more than $1 billion in Louisiana
exports. Nearly 160 Louisiana businesses have benefited from Ex-Im loans, the letter
says.¶ Greg Rusovich, CEO of Transoceanic Development, a New Orleans consultancy that specializes in connecting global
buyers and sellers in the heavy industry sector, said the bank supports Louisiana commerce at no cost to taxpayers.¶
According to its own reports, the bank claims to have returned $1 billion to the U.S. Treasury last year while offering
financing to support more than 1.2 million jobs in the United States over the past five years.¶ "The U.S. must level the
playing field with fierce global competition, and Ex-Im provides a crucial tool for our exporters to win on the global stage.
Congress must re authorize Ex-Im and further put our global competitors on their heels," Rusovich said.¶ Stephen
Waguespack, president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, said the
state has seen strong
economic growth in recent years, thanks in part to a robust export economy.¶ "In
the face of national economic headwinds, Louisiana has propped up its economy
through international trade," Waguespack said. "However, our state's economy may not stay
healthy unless Congress takes action to promote international trade, including reauthorizing
Ex-Im."¶ The push to shutter the bank has not gained unified support from House GOP members.¶ The Guardian
reported a group of 41 Republicans led by Rep. Charles Boustany, R- Lafayette, wrote McCarthy this week warning of dire
consequences for the nation's export industry if the bank's charter isn't renewed.¶ Politico reported Tuesday that House
Speaker John Boehner declined to say whether he thought the bank's charter should be renewed, exposing familiar
dividing lines within the party.¶ Though the House is expected to make the first move on a renewal, Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell told Politico he is pushing to bring the matter to the Senate floor before the Sept. 30 expiration
date. McConnell said he has not decided whether he will support it.
Shutdown
Failure to compromise on Ex-Im makes shutdown inevitable
Sargent 6/24
Greg, Washington Post, “Another government shutdown?” June 24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/24/another-governmentshutdown/
How do we get from here to a
government shutdown? It would start with Boehner and
McCarthy holding out against re-authorization despite intense business pressure.
Then Senate Dem leaders, later this summer, put reauthorization into a continuing
resolution funding the government and dare House Republicans to oppose it. Then (goes the
scenario envisioned by conservatives, anyway) House GOP leaders, under pressure from the right, say No to the
CR. Then Senate Dems are shutting down the government to protect corporate welfare.
AT Bank Bad
Billions in profit and negligible default rate
ITIF 12 (Information Technology & Innovation Foundation “The Export-Import Bank Works
For America: Responses to 18 Arguments for Cutting Ex-Im’s Authorization” INNOVATION
FACT SHEET: EX-IM BANK, 2012, http://www2.itif.org/2012-ex-im-bank.pdf)
7) The Ex-Im Bank was a New Deal program founded in the mid-1930s to assist with the export of
American goods. Among other things, it provides loans using funds backed by the full faith and
credit of the American people. This means Joe and Jane Taxpayer are responsible for the Bank's
activities.7
It also means that Joe and Jane taxpayer
are beneficiaries of the Bank’s activities.
The $34.4 billion in exports backed by the Bank and the 227,000 jobs, many of
them high-wage, that come from these exports benefit Joe and Jane Taxpayer
directly if they happen to work at one of the 3,300 firms getting Ex-Im financing, or at
those firms’ suppliers, or a business in the community where the Ex-Im
beneficiary firm or supplier is located. They benefit indirectly by having a larger
economy. More and higher wage jobs mean higher total U.S. tax revenues and lower
government costs (e.g., unemployment insurance). Moreover, the Ex-Im Bank has returned
$3.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury above and beyond the cost of its operations over
the past five years and has achieved a loan default rate of less than 1.5 percent. So
Joe and Jane taxpayer have benefited from Ex-Im activities.
Ex Im had a superb year – weak markets and export upswing
O’Connell 12 (Michael O'Connell “Export-Import Bank gives while other agencies take”
Federal News Radio, November 16 2012,
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/533/3122331/Export-Import-Bank-gives-while-otheragencies-take)
one agency had a banner year. The Export-Import Bank, which lends money to American
companies that do business abroad, had a record number of transactions in fiscal 2012. Fred Hochberg,
New figures show
the Export-Import Bank president told The Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Emily Kopp there were two good reason for the bank's
we're on an export upswing," he said. "Exports topped $2.1 trillion last year.
Never have we done more exports than we did in 2011. And two, the other thing that's not as good is
the financial markets are still kind of weak. So, one of the reasons we've had to step in is to
make sure we keep those exports going and the jobs being created. We need to step in
success. "One,
sometimes and help finance those exports." The bank is not subsidized; rather, it collects a fee for the work it does, which covers all of the
On top of that, in fiscal 2012, we sent the Treasury $1.1
billion," Hochberg said. "Subsidy usually means you get something from the government. We
agency's administrative costs and loan-lost reserves. "
actually contribute to the government."
Almost no defaults
O’Connell 12
Michael O'Connell “Export-Import Bank gives while other agencies take” Federal News Radio,
November 16 2012, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/533/3122331/Export-Import-Bank-giveswhile-other-agencies-take
While the Export-Import Bank is able to offer low-interest loans like other banks, its loans are backed by the "full faith and
credit of the U.S. government," Hockberg said. "We did almost $36 billion worth of approved loans and most of those
loans go to foreign buyers so that they can buy U.S. goods," he said. "Very few of them actually go to U.S. companies. Most
of them go to their customers." Bright future ahead for U.S. exports Looking down the road to the next four or five years,
Hochberg expects to see the large upswing in exports to continue. "We make a difference in two areas, long-term loans and
small business," he said. "Those two areas I believe are going to still have trouble getting lending from banks for quite
some time to come. According to the 2012 Annual Report, the
bank has not only been posting good
numbers, its employees are more productive as well. Part of the workforce's success is its
collaborative nature. "People have found a lot of shortcuts," Hochberg said. "We've eliminated things like Credit
Committee, so the career staff of the bank can approve loans up to $10 million. There's a process for that, but the point is,
we've delegated more authority to our employees and we've tried to therefore cut cycle time." Using this process, the
bank has been able to process 98 percent of all loans within 100 days and 90
percent within 30 days. Helping business succeed overseas The bank's role is to help companies that are
having a difficult time finding financing due the nature of the products they produce — satellite, nuclear power plants or
large commercial aircraft — or the countries they are selling products to. "U.S. companies are sometimes selling to
countries that are hard to finance into," Hochberg said. "Kazakhstan, South Africa, Colombia, these are more difficult
markets for banks to be comfortable in. So, we try to fill the gap on products that are hard to finance and countries that are
hard to finance." The Export-Import Bank
conducts extensive credit reviews of its customers
and reports its default rates to Congress every 90 days. "Our defaults right now are
running about one-third of 1 percent," he said. Currently, the bank operates in 178 countries and is
waiting for the State Department and President Obama to make a decision about whether it can begin doing business in
Burma.
AT It’s Political
Not used as a political tool
Hillman 82 – Northwestern University School of Law (Jordan Jay Hillman, “Eximbank as a
Public Enterprise: The Role of Congress and the Executive Branch” Northwestern Journal of
International Law & Business Volume 4 Issue 2, Fall 1982,
http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1122&context=njilb
)
The central reality governing the relationship between the Executive Branch and the Bank derives
from the President's authority under the Act to appoint the Bank's President (and Board
Chairman), First Vice President (and Board Vice Chairman) and the three other voting directors
to serve at his pleasure without fixed terms. 125 This is not to suggest that the Bank operates
primarily as a political arm of the White House in its handling transactions. Within the
framework of Congressional oversight, public opinion and the potential complaints of more
clearly deserving but disappointed applicants, prudence will normally restrain the President and
the Bank from using the Bank's decisional authority simply as a mechanism for distributing
Presidential favors.
The Bank can divorce itself from the political arena
Hillman 82 – Northwestern University School of Law (Jordan Jay Hillman, “Eximbank as a
Public Enterprise: The Role of Congress and the Executive Branch” Northwestern Journal of
International Law & Business Volume 4 Issue 2, Fall 1982,
http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1122&context=njilb
)
As regards Presidential-Bank relations in general, it would appear that during periods of
pronounced promotional activity and program expansion the Bank and the President seek
actively to identify with each other.'32 In contrast, during periods of program transition,
contraction or flatness the parties are less inclined to embrace each other in public. 33 What
seems to be the most notable effort toward formal identification occurred in 1979 under President
Carter. In his Reorganization Plan Number 3 of that year, the President designated the holder of
the newly created Office of Trade Representative and the Secretary of Commerce as ex officio
non-voting members of the Bank's Board. 34 The appointments were made in the context of a
transmittal message which declared as the general responsibility of the Trade Representative "to
ensure a vigorous and coordinated Government wide export expansion effort," while the Secretary
of Commerce was to assume the principal mission of "fostering the international competitiveness
of American industry."'135
Links
Arctic Exploration/Development
Artic exploration will trigger a major showdown—seen as a symbol of
greed and dirty energy. Friction between the government and local
interests also sets the stage for political conflict
Østhagen 13, Andreas Østhagen works for the North Norway European Office in Brussels
while contributing to The Arctic Institute, a D.C. based think tank. He holds a MSc in
International Relations from London School of Economics and has previously worked on Arctic
issues at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) and the Norwegian Institute for
Defense Studies in Oslo (Andreas, “Arctic Oil and Gas: Hype or Reality?” The Fletcher Forum of
World Affairs/Tufts University, 3/9/13,
http://www.fletcherforum.org/2013/04/09/osthagen/)//ADravid
In 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that 25% of the remaining recoverable undiscovered oil and gas resources in the world were located in the Arctic
the region became branded as a “new energy province” overnight. While more recent
nonArctic states, including China, Singapore and Italy, interested in gaining access to the debates
concerning this new global hotspot. International commercial heavyweights, such as Shell Oil, Total, and ExxonMobil, are also
realizing the lure of these natural resources. In particular, the North American Arctic–encompassing Alaska,
northern Canada, and Greenland—has seen a rapid influx of such actors. A closer
region. Subsequently,
studies have been conducted, this early estimate attracted a number of applications for permanent observer status on the Arctic Council from an array of
examination of the actualities involved in oil and gas development in the “High North,” however, reveals a different picture. A combination of factors can help
explain why the concept of Arctic oil and gas needs to be further investigated and nuanced before any accurate or reliable predictions can be made on the future of
Arctic petroleum development is inherently dependent on
commercial profitability. Sustained high oil and gas price levels, in combination
with the cost of extraction, are the main determinants in the decision to invest in
Arctic extraction. The current high price levels for oil, which has remained at an annual average of almost $100 per barrel since 2008,
the region itself. Here’s why. First,
consequently prompts an interest in Arctic resources. The International Energy Agency (IEA), and the world markets, however, expect the price to fall in the long
term. The IEA also argues that the cost of Arctic oil production will be very high, ranging anywhere between forty to one hundred dollars per barrel. Should these
predictions come true, the profitability of Arctic oil extraction will be dramatically reduced. Similarly, the natural gas spot price for the North American market has
also seen a remarkable shift over the last decade. Natural gas prices rose sharply towards 2009, prompting interest in recoverable Arctic natural gas. In 2010,
however, following a sudden boom in domestic shale gas production, the United States embarked on a path to self-sufficiency with price levels dropping
As with Arctic oil, natural gas from the High North does
not seem to be as profitable as originally predicted. A second stumbling block to
Arctic petroleum development is environmental concerns. In the North American Arctic, as elsewhere,
the public is concerned about the environmental risks that come with
oil and gas extraction. The 1989 oil spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska, and more recently, the Deepwater Horizon
accordingly for the whole of North America.
accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, serve as reminders to the public of the potential consequences drilling in ecologically sensitive areas carries. Highlighting
Greenpeace has been extremely active in promoting its “Save the
Arctic” campaign. Litigation and activism by indigenous
communities and local NGOs have similarly halted much of the
Chukchi Sea development in Alaska. Internationally, Arctic resource
exploration has attracted attention as a symbol of corporate greed
and climate change. As more and more attention is paid to the Arctic,
striking the right balance between the conflicting interests in the
region becomes of paramount importance to national politicians
intent on reelection. As such, discussions concerning Arctic oil and gas
activities often seem to inspire conflict and public outcry, such that
the power of civic engagement, in terms of halting the processes,
this,
should not be underestimated . A third hindrance comes from the friction
caused when regional interests collide with those of the Federal government. The
people and local governments of Alaska, for example, are increasingly interested
in mineral and oil extraction to boost local employment levels and tax bases.
Washington, D.C., however, is wary of the politically unpopular issue Arctic
mining or drilling generates amongst environmental organizations. The
deadlock between these two competing interests constitute yet
another hindrance for the rapid petroleum development in the
Arctic. Although the Arctic undoubtedly contains a vast amount of natural resources, its status as a “new energy province” should not go unquestioned.
As highlighted, there are significant economic and political factors that need to be considered before Arctic oil and gas development becomes a reality. Canada
takes over the chair of the Arctic Council in May of this year, followed by the United States in 2015. Awareness of these issues is therefore essential, as the debate
on drilling for oil and gas in the North American Arctic will only intensify in the future.
Huge backlash against exploratory development of the arctic—
environmentalist and scientist opposition
Hance 12, Writer for mongabay.com, a website covering environmental issues; also a
published author writing about conservation and biodiversity (Jeremy, “Opposition rising against
U.S. Arctic drilling,” mongabay.com, 2/9/12, http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0209hance_arctic_drilling_us.html)//ADravid
Drilling in the Arctic waters of the U.S. may become as contested an issue as
the Keystone Pipeline XL in up-coming months. Scientists, congress members, and
ordinary Americans have all come out in large numbers against the Obama
Administration's leases for exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea and the Chuckchi Sea. Last month 573
scientists signed a letter against opening the Arctic up to drilling until more
research can be done in the sensitive area. In addition, a letter signed by 60 Congress
members has been sent to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar noting that the Deepwater Horizon
disaster occurred only two years ago. Finally, nearly half a million Americans (400,000)
signed a petition against drilling in the Arctic. Critics of the Obama
Administration's leases say there is no coherent plan to clean-up a spill in the icy,
remote Arctic ecosystem, which already embattled by climate change. "The Arctic
is the last wild ocean on the planet. Its waters and the abundant life they support
are simply too sensitive to be drilled—especially since neither the oil industry nor scientists have identified a proven way to
contain or clean up a spill in the Arctic’s extreme conditions," Chuck Clusen, Alaska Project Director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a press
release. "At the very least, there should be no plan to lease these areas until key scientific studies have been done and until the oil and gas industry can demonstrate
scientists asked the administration to "to follow
through on its commitment to science" by following recommendations made by the United States Geological Survey (USGS)
its ability to contain and clean up a spill." The letter from
and refrain from drilling until more research can be done. Still, drilling in the Arctic could begin as early as this summer by Royal Dutch Shell. The oil company
argues that it has a meticulous oil-response plan even given the intense conditions of drilling in the Arctic, including response vessels standing by. Shell Alaska Vice
President Pete Slaiby told the Associated Press that the company would be ready with a capping stack, similar to what was used to stop the Gulf oil spill in 2010
Critics of Arctic drilling argue that given the extreme weather
conditions, icy waters, and the remoteness of any oil well, it would currently be
impossible to clean-up an oil spill adequately. Furthermore, clean-up efforts would almost certainly have to stop
after the well leaked for three months.
during the long Arctic winter. Currently the federal government is asking Shell to stop operations 38 days before the seasonal sea ice would arrive to make certain
an oil spill doesn't occur at the end of the season. Shell is trying to overturn this ruling. "If the Obama administration were making its decision based on science
rather than politics, drilling in the Arctic would be a nonstarter," Rebecca Noblin, the Alaska Director with Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).
"The
Arctic Ocean is America’s last best wilderness. Launching massive industrial
drilling operations risks America’s Arctic legacy for oil company profits." Last year Shell
had the largest oil spill in the UK in a decade, while the oil giant also accepted responsibility for two massive oil spills in Nigeria in 2008 totaling 11 million gallons
of crude. A thorough report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) found widespread pollution devastating Nigerian people and ecosystems. For
his part, President Obama in the State of the Union address touted the fact that oil production in the U.S. was the highest its been in eight years. He also said his
"directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources." The President furthermore noted that clean energy
must still be apart of the U.S. energy mix, stating "I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany." Despite Obama's oil drilling push, gas
prices remain high in the U.S. simply because further domestic production has miniscule impact on the global price of oil. Instead,
environmentalists say, the only thing that will lower oil prices in the U.S. is to
reduce dependency on oil altogether.
Environmentalist and indigenous resistance against exploring the
Arctic for resource deposits
Franzen 13, Reporter at The Verge. Formerly lead tech reporter at Talking Points Memo.
Before that, launch writer at The Daily (RIP) and The Atlantic Wire(Carl, “Arctic oil boom sparks
the next great political and environmental battle,” The Verge, 5/17/13,
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/17/4340010/arctic-oil-drilling-to-increase-as-climatechanges)//ADravid
Things are heating up fast in the far north. The lands and sea of the Arctic — which have been ice-filled, inhospitable and treacherous for most of human history —
are experiencing the effects of climate change more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth. All of the Arctic’s sea ice is expected to melt completely, every summer,
beginning around 2050 or sooner, according to one recent study, clearing the way for unprecedented oil and gas drilling. But oil companies and world governments
aren’t waiting until then to spur an oil boom in the Arctic — they’re starting now. Just this week, the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental group made up of the US
and seven other countries that share the Arctic border, met in Kiruna, Sweden, and announced a new agreement to cooperate on Arctic oil spill response. "That’s an
important framework for cooperation in the event of an emergency," said US Secretary of State John Kerry ahead of the signing. "And as the United States was
reminded painfully in the Gulf of Mexico three years ago, we need strong partnerships and shared operational guidelines before a disaster occurs in order to make
sure that we’re able to respond." "WE NEED STRONG PARTNERSHIPS AND SHARED OPERATIONAL GUIDELINES BEFORE A DISASTER OCCURS." Oil
companies note they have already been operating in the Arctic for decades, but this has mostly been focused on exploration, surveying, and other research to
prepare for drilling. Oil companies first attempted to drill in the Canadian portion of the Arctic in the 1970s and '80s, but found the terrain difficult and the supply
Actual drilling beyond the initial attempts in the Canadian
Arctic has been slow to come in part due to court filings by wildlife conservation
groups which seek to halt initial developments over environmental concerns. Despite
that, there have already been several oil industry-related disasters in the Arctic , albeit
of oil insufficient to justify the risks and costs.
minor ones. Royal Dutch Shell (better known as Shell in the US) saw one of its Alaskan offshore rigs drift dangerously close to shore and suffer an engine fire in
2012, while the company’s other Alaskan drilling rig ran aground off an uninhabited island on New Year’s Eve this year and was damaged, though no fuel was
reported leaked. The incidents, combined with regulatory scrutiny by the US government, prompted Shell to halt its Alaskan offshore oil drilling plans for at least
the rest of this year. Still, "Shell remains committed to building an Arctic exploration program that provides confidence to stakeholders and regulators," said
Marvin Odum, director of Shell’s Upstream Americas division, in a statement. "SHELL REMAINS COMMITTED TO BUILDING AN ARCTIC EXPLORATION
PROGRAM." Meanwhile, the Arctic Council’s new oil spill cleanup agreement has been heralded as something of a coming of age for the group, which was founded
in 1996 largely as a symbolic organization. In recent years though, the Council has taken on far more serious auspices, enacting legally-binding international
agreements to cooperate on Arctic search and rescue in 2011, and, this year, on oil pollution. Despite what would seem to be the Council’s proactive move to deal
with what would seem to be an inevitable emergency in the Arctic, environmentalists warn that this year’s agreement could further facilitate the destruction of
animal habitats and the indigenous communities who call the region home. This agreement is so vaguely written that it will have very little practical value in
increasing the level of preparedness for an oil spill," said Ben Ayliffe, head of conservation group Greenpeace International’s Arctic Oil division, in an email to The
"THE ARCTIC IS THE
DEFINING ENVIRONMENTAL BATTLE OF THE EARLY 21ST
CENTURY." Greenpeace advocates protested the Arctic Council’s latest
meeting on May 14 and 15, by organizing a rival conference, The People’s Arctic, which was
designed to rally indigenous Arctic communities to oppose the unrestricted
economic development of the Arctic’s vast oil and mineral resources
by multibillion-dollar corporations. The Arctic is estimated to hold between 13 percent and 25 percent of the world’s
undiscovered oil deposits, and up to 30 percent of its undiscovered natural gas deposits, according to estimates by governments and oil companies. "The
Arctic is the defining environmental battle of the early 21st century and
Greenpeace aren’t going to stop until we’ve won," Ayliffe said. But as it turns out, the current US government
supports oil drilling in the Arctic. "Continuing to responsibly develop Arctic oil and gas resources
aligns with the United States ‘all of the above’ approach to developing new
domestic energy sources," reads a key line in the new US National Strategy for
the Arctic Region released by the White House last week. For environmentalists,
the new US strategy seems odd, given the Obama administration’s messy
experience dealing with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in
2010, and its general opposition to other prominent oil projects at lower
Verge. "If this is the best the Arctic Council can do after years of work, then heaven help us
."
latitudes, like the Keystone XL pipeline. At worst, it smacks of an outright betrayal of
President Obama’s stated commitment to cutting down on US fossil fuel
emissions. "CONTINUING TO RESPONSIBLY DEVELOP ARCTIC OIL AND GAS RESOURCES ALIGNS WITH THE UNITED STATES ‘ALL OF THE
ABOVE’ APPROACH." "It’s certainly strange seeing President Obama making such strong
statements on finally tackling global climate change, but then opening up the
frozen north — the one place that is warming faster than anywhere else on the
planet and where sea ice is entering what scientists are calling a ‘death spiral’ — to the oil industry," Greenpeace’s Ayliffe said. More broadly, the entire
Arctic Council is in many ways at odds with itself. The eight members on the Council — Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Russia — each
vary fairly widely when it comes to the relative size and power of their domestic oil industries, as well as their support for alternative energy. The government of
Sweden, for example, committed to establishing an "oil-free" economy in 2006, but was ousted by another government that does not support this plan. Canada,
once a beacon of environmentalism, has seen wide expansion of oil and gas development under its conservative Harper government. But the newly elected
government of Greenland, which is considered part of Denmark for the purposes of the Council, recently enacted a moratorium on new offshore oil and gas drilling
licenses in Arctic waters. RUSSIA TRIED TO ASSERT A CLAIM OVER THE NORTH POLE IN 2007 Complicating matters is the fact that the Arctic territorial
claims of each of these countries, which oil companies need to lease, are disputed. Russia tried to assert a claim over the North Pole in 2007, but Denmark and
Norway also say they own a part of it, and there are numerous rival claims to Arctic waters. While small diplomatic skirmishes have broken out and been resolved,
there have yet to be any serious conflicts. Going forward, the US and other Arctic Council countries have said they want to preserve that status quo, but this will
surely become harder as oil and gas companies ramp up their developments. For environmentalists, the forecast for the future of the Arctic appears grim, but they
have latched on to one recent silver lining: oil companies running into serious technological and regulatory challenges to drilling the Arctic. Since Shell announced
its pause in Arctic drilling earlier this year, competitors Statoil and ConocoPhillips have both paused or adjusted their Arctic oil development timelines, many citing
variations of "regulatory uncertainty." Other oil companies are looking to Russia, where the regulations are less strict, but getting approval there could still take
years. "If we’d have believed the oil industry five years ago we’d now be witnessing a massive boom in the Arctic oil industry," Ayliffe said. "We were told it was
The technical
challenges remain extraordinary. No one has found a way of cleaning up oil
spilled in ice."
inevitable, just a matter of time. But that hasn’t been the case and many companies have had their fingers burnt ...
Arctic exploration is vastly unpopular—empirics prove opposition
against environmental impacts
Lacey 12, reporter/blogger for Climate Progress, where he writes about clean energy policy,
technologies, and finance(Stephen, “60 Members of Congress and Nearly 400,000 American
Citizens Urge Obama to Halt Arctic Offshore Drilling,” Think Progress, 2/8/12,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/08/421360/congress-citizens-obama-halt-arcticoffshore-drilling/)//ADravid
As the Obama Administration moves to open up Arctic waters for exploratory
offshore oil and gas drilling, a raising tide of opposition is emerging to
counter the decision . In the last two weeks, dozens of members of Congress, hundreds of
scientists, and tens of thousands of concerned citizens have expressed their
concerns about the environmental impact of drilling in Arctic waters. In an open letter signed
yesterday by 60 members of Congress, federal lawmakers called on Interior Secretary Ken
Salazar to halt all leases for the Arctic in the agency’s five-year plan until a more sound review
of disaster-response capabilities can be conducted: “Successful oil spill response methods … cannot simply
be transferred to the Arctic. The Arctic is a unique environment with significant hurdles that the DOI and related agencies must
genuinely address before considering any new leasing in the region prior to including Arctic areas in a five-year plan.” This follows a months-long investigation into
the Center for American Progress oceans team, which found a
complete lack of infrastructure to deal with an oil spill: There are no U.S. Coast Guard stations north of the
disaster preparation in the Arctic by
Arctic Circle, and we currently operate just one functional icebreaking vessel. Alaska’s tiny ports and airports are incapable of supporting an extensive and
sustained airlift effort. The region even lacks such basics as paved roads and railroads. This dearth of infrastructure would severely hamper the ability to transport
the supplies and personnel required for any large-scale emergency response effort. Furthermore, the extreme and unpredictable weather conditions complicate
573 scientists sent a letter to
the White House urging the Obama Administration to take a science-based
approach to issuing leases in the Arctic and to avoid opening up the region
because of political pressure to expand drilling: “Doing so prior to authorizing new oil and gas activity in the Arctic Ocean will respect
transportation, preparedness, and cleanup of spilled oil to an even greater degree. Just two weeks before,
the national significance of the environment and cultures of U.S. Arctic waters and demonstrate the value that your Administration places on having a sound
scientific basis for managing industrial development of the Outer Continental Shelf.” If one were to follow these concerns about taking a science-based approach to
their logical conclusion, it’s highly unlikely that anyone would consider drilling for more fossil fuels in the Arctic. In its environmental impact statement, the
Department of Interior even admits that “the Arctic is experiencing variations that are accelerating faster than previously realized” due to climate change —
ironically making the region more attractive for oil and gas extraction as sea ice continues its downward spiral. Apparently,
the plan isn’t
sitting well with many interested citizens either. Today was the final deadline for public
comments, and almost 400,000 people have asked President Obama to stop the sales
of leases in the Department of Interior’s five-year plan, according to the Alaska Wilderness League. The
Obama Administration is set to approve exploratory Arctic drilling permits to Royal Dutch Shell for operations next summer — a company that recently spilled 218
tons of oil in the North Sea and has the worst spill record in the UK since 2000.
Aquaculture
Huge backlash against aquaculture—environmentalist and fishing
opposition, lawsuits prove
Raines 11, Reporter covering the environment for Alabama Media Group (Ben, “Offshore fish
farms promoted by NOAA officials; opponents say plan leaves many issues unresolved,” Alabama
media Group, 6/17/11,
http://blog.al.com/live/2011/06/offshore_fish_farms_promoted_b.html)//ADravid
environmentalists and some commercial
fishing interests have promised to fight against fish farming in the
nation’s oceans in every way possible. The practice is blamed for
undermining the genetic purity of wild salmon strains; driving down the price of
wild-caught fish; polluting coastal waters with excess nutrients, antibiotics and
pesticides; and spreading disease and plagues of sea lice to some wild fish
populations. Promised lawsuits will question whether NOAA has the basic
authority under federal law to regulate fish farming. Those lawsuits won’t come until sometime after NOAA
Opponents: plan a smokescreen for factory fish farming. But
issues formal regulations for the industry, which is expected in about a year. And no permits for offshore fish farms can be filed until regulations are in place,
federal officials said.
“The announcement that NOAA was moving forward with the Gulf of
Mexico plan was a true sign that this national policy is merely a smokescreen for
factory fish farming off U.S. shores,” said Zach Corrigan, an attorney with Food and Water Watch, a
group that has emerged as one of the primary opponents of offshore aquaculture. Corrigan said federal officials are moving
aggressively to promote fish farming despite emerging problems all around the
world. He promised his organization would sue to protect the nation’s oceans and
fishermen. The industry envisioned in the new federal plan will be cleaner, safer and better managed than problematic farm operations in Norway,
Canada, Scotland, Bangladesh, India and elsewhere. “We want to be vigilant about those problems, but we do have 20 or 30 years of lessons learned,” said NOAA’s
Rubino. He said the nation imports more than 75 percent of its seafood, a figure expected to rise as seafood consumption continues to grow. The country also
exports more than half of the seafood caught in American waters, Rubino said.
Members of Congress, chefs, food enthusiasts, policy experts and the
public strongly oppose aquaculture—health concerns and pollution
Food and Water Watch 09, non-profit organization for ecological sustainability (FWW,
“Food & Water Watch Partners with Washington, DC Chefs to Oppose Controversial Gulf
Aquaculture Plan and Rally to Support Sustainable Seafood”7/29/09,
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/food-water-watch-partners-with-washingtondc-chefs-to-oppose-controversial-gulf-aquaculture-plan-and-rally-to-support-sustainableseafood/)//ADravid
renowned Washington D.C.-area chefs emerged from
their kitchens to partner with Food & Water Watch and stir up a
diverse crowd of activists, foodies and policy experts to rally against
the controversial Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council ocean
fish farming plan currently being considered by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Donning chef aprons and toques outside the
department‚ building, the group spoke in opposition to the plan that could threaten
consumer health, the environment and coastal communities if approved at the
federal level. Both chefs and Food & Water Watch experts advocated for a program for better wild fisheries management and more
Washington, D.C. , Today,
sustainable aquaculture to meet our nation‚ seafood needs. ‚Whether were chefs or consumers, we all deserve to have clean, green and safe
seafood,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. ‚
The Gulf Council fish farming plan
could put another industrially farmed product on our plates at a time when
Americans are increasingly demanding food produced in a healthy and
sustainable manner.” The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, one of
eight regional councils that manage the fisheries, voted on a plan to open gulf
waters to industrial fish farming in January 2009, despite overwhelming
public opposition. Offshore aquaculture – the growing thousands of fish crammed in cages three to 100 miles offshore – are similar to
massive industrial chicken farms in the ocean, with many fish in cramped quarters, eating, excreting and growing. According to Food & Water Watch‚ report Fishy
the fish produced from offshore aquaculture may be hazardous to human
health. In the case of salmon, farmed fish contain higher levels of PCBs, dioxin, flame retardants, pesticides, and other
toxins than wild fish because these contaminants are often present in the fish that are ground up for feed. These substances,
combined with concentrated fish wastes, could also pollute the marine
environment and damage oceans. ‚The public is leading the demand for more sustainable seafood, and it‚ my job as a chef to
Farms,
reach out to other chefs and help them meet consumer needs,” said Chef Rocky Barnette, Food & Water Watch liaison chef. ‚The more you have access to fresh,
sustainable fish, the less you have to do in the cooking process , the better the fish, the less you have to do with it.” Barnette was joined by other Washington, D.C.area chefs including: Cedric Maupaillier, Central Michel Richard; Chris Edwards, Patowmack Farm; Conner Ireland, The Reef; and Shannon Overmiller, Majestic.
Other chefs from D.C.-area and Baltimore restaurants, including Gertrude’s and Cashion’s, signed a petition urging the U.S. Department of Commerce to oppose
the Gulf Management Council ocean fish farming plan. Marianne Cufone, director of the fish program at Food & Water Watch, delivered the petition with over 150
signatures to the U.S. Department of Commerce during today‚ rally. The plan is currently before the department for final approval and open to public comment.
‚We have yet to hear from Commerce Secretary Locke whether or not he intends to move forward with this potentially environmentally destructive and
just the latest group added to a long list
of critics, including members of Congress – to the Gulf plan, and hopefully today‚ rally will be the
economically devastating plan,” said Cufone.
‚ Chefs are
impetus for Secretary Locke in stopping this unpopular and controversial plan in its tracks.” The rally will be held today at 12:00pm at Pershing Park, 14th St. and
Pennsylvania Ave.
Massive opposition from fishermen and environmentalists—empirics
prove
McCarthy 07, writer for Politico (Aoife, “Waves of opposition to aquaculture bill,” 7/10/7,
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0707/4866.html)//ADravid
Two miles off the coast of the Puerto Rican island of Culebra, Brian O'Hanlon is farming fish 90 feet below the surface. He uses special cages capable of holding
almost 800,000 gallons of water to raise cobia, a mild-tasting white fish that often ends up in sushi or sashimi. O'Hanlon runs Snapperfarm Inc., an aquaculture
company, or offshore fish farm. Right now, it produces 50 tons of fish a year, but O'Hanlon wants to see that grow to 750 tons. With 68 acres of room, the only
thing stopping him is bureaucratic red tape. Under current law, no one agency regulates aquaculture in federal waters; depending on the type of project, a permit
may be necessary from the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Marine Corps of Engineers or
all of them. Some of the permits O'Hanlon has applied for have been in the works for five years. If he cannot get what he needs soon, he said his company might
move to Latin America. And that is exactly what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Fisheries Institute do not want to see
Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-W.Va.),
introduced the bill at the request of the Bush administration on April 24. Allyson L. Groff,
happen. The agency and the trade group see offshore aquaculture as a way to increase the domestic food supply.
chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources,
communications director for the committee, stressed that Rahall is not necessarily a proponent of the National Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2007. In a statement
he stated, "While I do not agree with many provisions in this legislation, I think it is important
for Congress to take a serious look at marine aquaculture and see if it is possible
to establish a program that makes economic and environmental sense." The bill
would make the U.S. Department of Commerce the sole regulator for the
fledgling industry. The agency would establish environmental requirements
largely through consulting with other federal agencies and coastal states to
identify what laws are already in place. Commerce would also be able to issue more permits for offshore farms, in hopes of
Rahall submitted to the record,
producing more fish in U.S. waters. Currently, 80 percent of the seafood Americans consume is imported, according to Commerce statistics, and at least half of that
The bill hasn't been a universal hit within the fishing world. Environmental
groups and a slew of local fishermen's associations that make up the Wild Fish
Network say it's weak in terms of regulation. Thirty-one organizations, most of which are
is farmed.
members of the network, echoed that sentiment in a written appeal to Del. Madeleine Z. Bordallo (D-Guam), chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Fisheries,
to promote
aquaculture -- in particular, ocean fish farming -- at the expense of the
marine ecosystems and fishing communities ," they argued. Rahall's legislation does
Wildlife and Oceans
. "We strongly oppose the bill because it appears
not contain adequate standards to eliminate or minimize the diseases that wild
fish could catch from farmed fish, the groups told Bordallo, nor does it address how the
aquaculture industry would ensure that the food and chemicals used for the
farmed fish do not harm wild fish. The bill's opponents said chaos could
result as the offshore fish farms face off with marine reserves, vessel traffic
lanes and known wild-fishing grounds for space. Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen's Associations in San Francisco, said he could sum up the bill in two words: "It sucks." A member of the Wild Fish Network, his organization primarily
represents fishermen in California, Oregon and Washington.
"Nobody is really addressing the type of standards
that are needed to make sure offshore aquaculture does not endanger natural
stocks," he said. One of his major concerns is fish farmers' feeding wild fish to
their fish. He's also worried about farms that use soy feed. "What are we trying to accomplish," he explained, "if
we are grinding up food to satisfy the palates of the wealthiest nation?" These complaints
put the cart before the horse, said NOAA spokeswoman Susan Buchanan. Once the bill is passed, she said, the details surrounding the environmental concerns can
be fully explored. To test offshore aquaculture's potential, NOAA has been monitoring four fish farms in waters regulated by coastal states and territories, including
a site in New Hampshire that Sen. John Sununu (R) has long advocated; O'Hanlon's Snapperfarm is another one. Their success prompted NOAA to make Rahall's
bill a priority for the agency and the administration. In addition to NOAA and the National Fisheries Institute, the bill has garnered support from the National
Restaurant Association, the Grocery Manufacturers of America and the American Soybean Association. The oil industry is a tacit backer, because of the potential
that oil rigs have to be reborn as offshore aquaculture bases. Recycling the rigs instead of taking them apart could save oil companies millions of dollars.
Opponents have found some heavy hitters of their own within Alaska's
congressional delegation. Offshore fish farming has been illegal in that state since
1990. The NOAA bill would change that and allow farms to form anywhere more than 13 miles from the coast. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (RAlaska) introduced the Natural Stock Conservation Act of 2007 as a preemptive
strike against Rahall's legislation. Her bill would prohibit the development of offshore fish
farms in federal waters until Congress has had an opportunity to review all of the serious implications. Since it has gained little traction, the
senator is considering a rewrite that would move the bill from the agriculture committee to the commerce committee. In the interim, she has an
army of fishermen working against Rahall's bill. Paula Terrel, a member of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council
who fishes for a living, said that Murkowski, along with her Alaska colleagues, Sen. Ted Stevens (R) and Rep. Don Young
(R), has been in constant contact with the fishing community as it tries to protect
the region's waters. Terrel said her group, as well as other fishing organizations across
the state, is bringing members to Washington to speak out on the bill and is pushing every
gear -- fishing lingo for different types of anglers -- to ensure that every troller, gill netter, long liner, crabber and shrimper understands the issue at hand.
Mounting opposition to aquaculture—activist organizations,
fishermen and politicians
Fry 10, fisherwoman and writer for Homer News Seawatch (Christy, “Aquaculture proposal
criticized as unnecessary,” Homer News, 1/6/10,
http://homernews.com/stories/010610/seawatch_bu_001.sh tml)//ADravid
An association that works with global grassroots organizations to advocate for
safe, healthy food and water and promotes public resource ownership has
blasted a bill made public on Christmas Eve by California Congresswoman Lois Capps that would allow
offshore aquaculture in federal waters , 3 to 200 miles offshore. The nonprofit Food
and Water Watch calls the bill "unnecessary and not a step toward
protecting our oceans and fishermen's jobs from harms associated
with ocean fish farming. " "While Representative Capps may intend legislation as a safeguard against a piecemeal approach to
developing and regulating ocean aquaculture, the ultimate effect is of streamlining the process for the industry to better establish itself in the U.S.," according to
Fish farming can have devastating effects on the environment and
fishing jobs and produce lower-quality fish for consumers, the group said.
Food and Water Watch.
Environmental problems can include escapement of fish, pollution of
surrounding waters with excess feed and fish waste, and transmission of
parasites and diseases to wild populations. Food and Water Watch points out the bill contains limited liability for
damages to natural resources. Former Sen. Ted Stevens introduced the first National Offshore Aquaculture Act in 2005 after concerns from the Bush
administration that the United States was falling behind in global seafood cultivation and a near $8 billion seafood trade deficit. Capps' legislation is the National
Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2009. There was also an act introduced in 2007. Stevens later introduced an amendment that would allow coastal states to
opt out of allowing offshore aquaculture. Capps defended her bill, saying "My legislation represents a huge step forward in our efforts to establish a comprehensive
regulatory framework for offshore aquaculture development that balances environmental, social and economic concerns. I believe that by working together we can
U.S. Sen.
Lisa Murkowski has twice offered legislation prohibiting the development of any
new offshore aquaculture ventures in federal waters until Congress addresses the
environmental issues associated with offshore aquaculture. Food and Water Watch says that
"rather than continue with legislation to regulate (and thus allow) ocean fish
farming, Rep. Capps should instead support legislation that would prevent the
growth of this industry. To supplement U.S. seafood production and increase green jobs, a much more sustainable approach is necessary.
create a common sense framework that ensures that offshore aquaculture development proceeds in an ecologically sustainable fashion."
Representative Capps should support the exploration of aquaculture techniques that have fewer negative environmental and economicimpacts, such as land-based
re-circulating systems." The Dungeness crab fishery in Southeast Alaska fell off somewhat in 2009 with a total harvest of just over 3.5 million pounds, down from
4.7 million pounds in 2008, and a village is asking the Board of Fisheries to shut down the more productive summer season. The organized village of Kasaan, a
federally recognized tribal government, submitted the proposal to the board saying the summer fishery negatively impacted the subsistence harvest. The board will
take up the proposal at its March meeting, which addresses statewide finfish and supplemental issues. The fishery was open for two months this fall, and two
months last summer. The fall harvest totaled 949,000 pounds of Dungeness; the summer harvest was 2.6 million pounds. The average price paid to fishermen for
both seasons was $1.72 per pound, for a total value of $5.9 million. Fishermen interested in commenting on proposals going before the Board of Fisheries for the
February meeting dealing with Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands finfish issues have until Jan. 12 to do so. Several of the proposals have to do with the statewaters cod fishery, and most of those are looking to limit who can participate, mostly by restrictions in vessel size. Others aim to increase the percentage of the
federal cod quota set aside for state waters to 50 percent. Salmon proposals for the region, Area M and Chignik, include ways to increase the gillnet harvest of pink
salmon in the post-June fishery in Area M and increase fishing time for the Southeast District Mainland, as well as many others. The complete proposal book can
be found through the board's Web site at www.boards.adfg.state.ak.us. A study recently conducted in the Gulf of Alaska and published in the journal Nature
indicates that glaciers are a significant source of high-quality feed for the base of the food chain, and their continuing disappearance may cause problems for the
marine ecosystem. The research, which was conducted on 11 coastal watersheds in the Gulf of Alaska, has documented an interesting paradox with important
implications for coastal ecosystems. "Glacial watersheds comprise 30 percent of the Tongass National Forest and supply about 35 to 40 percent of the stream
discharge," says Rick Edwards, a co-author on the study. "These watersheds export dissolved organic matter that is remarkably biologically active in contrast to
that found in other rivers. Generally, scientists expect that organic matter decreases in its quality as a food source as it ages, becoming less and less active over
time." But the dissolved organic material discharged from the glacial watersheds in this study was almost 4,000 years old; yet surprisingly, more than 66 percent of
it was rapidly metabolized by marine microbes into living biomass to support marine food webs, according to Edwards.
Aquaculture seen as outdated and illegal—recent litigation proves
Recirculating Farms Coalition 13, farming and sustainability outreach group (RFC,
“Appellate Court Favors Groups Challenging Ocean Fish Farming,” 10/29/13,
http://www.recirculatingfarms.org/appellate-court-rules-in-favor-of-groups-challenging-oceanfish-farming/)//ADravid
, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision on a very
important lawsuit about ocean fish farming. Several groups had sued to stop the National Marine Fisheries Service
(NMFS), the federal agency responsible for conservation and management of ocean
resources, like fish, from issuing a permit to an ocean fish farming company in
Hawaii. The lower court initially ruled against the groups, saying that aquaculture was a form of fishing
and therefore the agency, which is tasked with regulating fish and fishing in U.S. waters, was able to issue such permits. The lower court also
ruled that the agency was under no obligation to study the impacts of allowing
fish farms in federal waters, once the facility’s activities had terminated. This decision was appealed, and
NMFS contended that the groups had no standing even to appeal. Today, the Appellate Court reversed some of
the lower court’s decision and rejected the agency’s argument about
standing . Marianne Cufone, Executive Director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition (and past
Director of the Oceans and Fish Program at Food and Water Watch, one of the groups on the lawsuit) said, “We are pleased that the
higher Court acknowledged that the groups did in fact have standing to sue –
meaning public concern regarding how ocean resources are used is a recognizable
right. We are also very pleased that the Court said NMFS is not off the hook for
studying the impacts of its permits after this type of project is finished.” Though the Court
Today
decided the agency was able to issue a permit in this limited circumstance, the court specifically found that the permit set no precedent.
“The ruling
supports that NMFS does not have blanket authority to permit ocean fish farming
in U.S. waters, and should immediately stop its attempts to permit fish farming in
the Gulf of Mexico and off the Hawaiian coast, both of which were premised on
the lower court’s original ruling in this case.” Cufone said. She continued, “We hope NMFS and
others pushing ocean aquaculture will now get on board with alternate more
sustainable forms of fish farming rather than continually trying to
promote outdated, unpopular approaches that are not authorized
under existing law .” Recirculating aquaculture systems and aquaponics involve raising fish in tanks on land. These methods are space
and energy efficient, can run on alternative energy like solar power and recycle water and waste. We look forward to working with NMFS and other entities in
developing eco-friendly fish farming practices in the U.S. and beyond.
Earth Monitoring
No support- support for using SQ programs only
Parthemore and Rogers 2011
Christine Parthemore Senior Advisor at United States Department of Defense and Adjunct
Professor, Security Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, Will Rogers
Military Legislative Assistant at U.S. Senator Brian Schatz former Bacevich Fellow at Center for a
New American Security and Environmental Change and Security Program at Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, “Blinded: The Decline of U.S. Earth Monitoring Capabilities
and Its Consequences for National Security” July 2011
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_Blinded_ParthemoreRogers_0.pdf
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_Blinded_ParthemoreRogers_0.pdf
DOD and development agencies rely on earth monitoring systems to monitor urbanization, migration patterns and
internal population displacement. Several government agencies also rely on earth monitoring capabilities to analyze
compliance with deforestation and emissions measures in international climate change treaties, just as the government
relies on space-based capabilities to monitor and verify compliance with non-proliferation treaties. Responding to
environmental and climate change trends requires a steady stream of reliable information from earth monitoring satellites
that is quickly becoming unavailable. Ideally, the U.S. government would replace its aging earth monitoring satellites.
Yet the current political and fiscal environments constrain available resources,
making it less likely that Congress will appropriate- ate funds to wholly replace
old systems. Given this reality, U.S. policymakers should use existing systems
more efficiently, improve information sharing among interagency partners and
leverage international partners’ investments in their own systems in order to
bolster U.S. climate and environmental data collection capabilities.
EWS
Programs constantly getting cut- no support
Parthemore and Rogers 2011
Christine Parthemore Senior Advisor at United States Department of Defense and Adjunct
Professor, Security Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, Will Rogers
Military Legislative Assistant at U.S. Senator Brian Schatz former Bacevich Fellow at Center for a
New American Security and Environmental Change and Security Program at Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, “Blinded: The Decline of U.S. Earth Monitoring Capabilities
and Its Consequences for National Security” July 2011
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_Blinded_ParthemoreRogers_0.pdf
budgeT coNSTrAiNTS
Budget constraints are likely to continue to severely limit U.S. investments in new
satellites and other capabilities, according to government officials in a range of agencies. Funding may
become the critical constraint on future earth monitoring capabilities. The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan,
for example, highlighted the importance of tsunami early warning capabilities. Yet funding
cuts threaten
NOAA’s Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) program,
which proved crucial for leveraging U.S. satellite and ground-based systems to extend evacuation time in Hawaii,
including at a range of coastal military bases. The
National Weather Service, which runs the DART
see cuts of up to 28 percent for fiscal year (FY) 2012.14 The U.S.
Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Famine Early Warning System
(FEWS) network will likely see its budget reduced in the next several years as
well, and accord- ing to many USAID officials the agency’s climate change work is
one of the areas most likely to be cut. NASA’s Applied Sciences Program, which dis- seminates
program, may
information and other data from NASA satellites, has also contributed to early warning and response to natural disasters.
The president’s budget request for FY 2012 includes 33.1 million dollars for this
program – down from 35.3 million dollars in FY 2010 – and Congress may cut
that number even further.15 These offices and programs are critical to executing the existing satellites’
missions. commuNicATiNg wiTh eNd uSerS Despite the pressing need to close the gaps in U.S. earth monitoring
capabilities, few policymakers have been agitating for investments in these sys- tems.
Indeed, many policymakers – the “end users” of environmental and climate data and the very constituents who are in a
position to advocate for sustaining this critical capability – do not always understand that the data they receive from their
staffs often rely on remote sensing capabilities. Top officials often receive analyses of environmental or climate conditions
and of how those conditions affect specific policy questions for which they are responsible (e.g., how decreasing ice cover
in the Arctic is affecting Russia’s behavior and decision making). Such analyses constitute some of the government’s most
important work on climate and environmental change, yet they contain little to no information about which satellites and
other capabilities produced the underlying data. Even the decision makers who can direct funding toward improving U.S.
capabilities or promote new focus areas for international cooperation do not always know how much they rely on these
data.
Exploration
Congress reducing budget for exploration
Mervis 13 – a reporter on science policy
(Jeff, 3/25/13, “Congress Completes Work on 2013 Spending Bill”,
http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/03/congress-completes-work-2013-spending-bill)//spark
U.S. research agencies finally know what they have to spend for the rest of the
2013 fiscal year after Congress completed work on 20 March on a bill to fund the
government through 30 September. The heavy lifting was completed by the Senate, and, on 21 March, the House of
Representatives accepted the Senate's version. The so-called continuing resolution modifies some of
the more onerous aspects of the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester
that went into effect earlier this month. But the spending bill retains the
overall $85 billion reduction in a trillion-dollar budget that covers
discretionary spending (which covers most science agencies). The Senate bill provides a detailed
spending road map for the National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
and the National Institute of Standards and Technology that includes congressional preferences. But other research
agencies, notably the National Institutes of Health, have received very little guidance beyond an overall amount they can
Dickering over the National Oceanoic and Atmospheric Administration's ( NOAA's ) 2013
budget caused plenty of sturm and drang over the past year . But the final
outcome has agency advocates feeling somewhat serene. "NOAA did well given the constraints of a
very tough budget situation—not perfect, but it could have been much, much
worse," says Scott Rayder, a former top NOAA aide who is now a senior adviser at the University Corporation for
spend.
Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The bottom line: Thanks to Superstorm Sandy, NOAA will have about $5.2
billion to spend in fiscal year 2013, some $300 million more than its 2012 total. All of that increase, however, comes from
a Sandy relief bill approved earlier this year that specifies how the agency must use the funds. The result is that some
of NOAA's research accounts will still feel pain from the automatic cuts known as
the sequester. The math can be hard to follow. Overall, Congress gave NOAA $5.1
billion in its final 2013 spending bill, matching the president's request. At first glance,
that total appears to be an increase. But the bill also requires a cut of nearly 2% to bring the agency's budget, in line with
government-wide spending limits, reducing the total to about $5 billion. The sequester—about a 5% cut—further reduces
The Sandy relief
bill finalized in February, however, added $476 million to NOAA's budget for a
range of specific needs, such as repairing laboratories and "hurricane
hunter" aircraft and new weather radars and satellites . The add-on put
NOAA back into the black for 2013, despite the sequester, and gives the agency
greater spending flexibility for some programs. Other programs, however, will
still feel pain. The largest, including its Office of Oceanic and
Atmospheric Research and the National Marine Fisheries Service, are
likely to end up with flat or slightly reduced budgets . And at least one researchrelated program will cease to exist. Congress endorsed a controversial plan to shut
down NOAA's National Undersea Research Program ( NURP ) , a $4 million program that gives academic
scientists access to research submersibles , and to fold it into the agency's broader ocean
exploration program . But lawmakers also directed NOAA to take a close look at the NURP's regional
the total to about $4.74 billion, some $150 million below NOAA's 2012 total of $4.89 billion.
partnerships with universities and other groups. Those "producing the most valuable scientific information," they agreed,
should be allowed to compete for continuing funding. The
agency will also have to tell Congress
what it plans to do with NURP's small fleet of piloted and automated undersea
craft.
Ocean Policy
Ocean Conservation Costs PC
Sielen 4/16
Alan B., is Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine
Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was Deputy
Assistant Administrator for International Activities at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
from 1995 to 2001.
“Sea Change: How to Save the Oceans” April 16, 2014
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141198/alan-b-sielen/sea-change
The oceans of studies on dying seas have done nothing to stop their devastation. In a 2011 report, the Oxford-based
International Program on the State of the Ocean wrote that the planet faced “losing marine species and entire marine
ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation.” Last month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reported that the effects of human-induced climate change are already far-reaching. It also singled out
ocean acidification. As the oceans absorb higher levels of carbon, the more acidic water threatens coral reefs, shellfish, and
other marine life.¶ The experts only confirm what people around the world see every day: marshland, once teeming with
wildlife, paved over; subsistence fishermen in poor countries driven from the ocean by industrial fishing; recreational
fishermen chasing fewer and smaller fish farther out to sea; surfers getting hepatitis shots before entering sewagecontaminated waters; families on vacation snorkeling through coral bone-yards. In the Chesapeake Bay, the United States’
largest estuary, harvests of native oysters have fallen to less than one percent of historic levels due to the combined effects
of overfishing, disease, and habitat destruction.¶ There
is no shortage of international
recommendations, action plans, and other prescriptions for restoring the oceans’
health. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the 2002
Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development (Rio+20) all put forward different ways to protect the oceans from pollution and overfishing, preserve
biological diversity, and help developing countries build the scientific and institutional capacities to run effective
conservation and management programs of their own. The calls for action have brought some victories, such as
international rules limiting what oil tankers discharge into the sea, a global ban on the disposal of nuclear waste into the
ocean, and the creation of marine reserves, or protected areas of the ocean. But as much as these measures helped, they
The problem is not ignorance but
political will . At the most basic level, governments and industries are simply
not doing enough of the right things. The situation is especially dire in poor countries, which have fewer
assets for managing and protecting marine resources. Even wealthy countries, such as the United
States, which has made admirable progress in reducing air pollution, providing safe
drinking water, and managing hazardous waste, continue to struggle to stem the
flow of pollutants into the ocean. Diminished trust in public institutions and the
political process makes agreement on even the simplest solutions
more difficult . But the longer government and society delay effective action, the worse things get.
have not eliminated all the other threats to the seas.¶
Ocean policies = not popular – Congress doesn’t care about the
benefits
Stauffer 6/1 – Ocean Program Manager at Surfrider Foundation
(6/1/14, Pete, “Texas Lawmaker Leads Attack on our National Ocean Policy”,
http://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/congress-takes-aim-at-our-national-oceanpolicy)//spark
When the National Ocean Policy was established by President Obama
in 2010 it signaled a serious attempt to address the many
shortcomings of our nation’s piecemeal approach to ocean
management . Taking its cue from the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy - a bipartisan
body established by President George W. Bush - the policy emphasizes improved collaboration
across all levels of government to address priorities such as water quality, marine
debris, and renewable energy A cornerstone of the policy is the establishment of regional ocean parterships
(ROPs) that empower states to work with federal agencies, stakeholders, tribes, and the public to plan for the future of the
ocean. In just three years, important progress has been made, despite a glaring lack of support from Congress. An
Implementation Plan has been released with hundreds of actions that federal agencies are taking to protect marine
ecosystems and coastal economies. Collaborative projects are moving forward to restore habitats, advance ocean science,
and engage stakeholders. And finally, the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and West Coast regions have begun ocean planning to
such
success stories do not resonate well in Washington D.C., where
controversy rules the day and political parties instinctively oppose
each other’s proposals. As an initiative of the Obama Presidency, the policy has
suffered from partisan attacks, despite the collaborative framework it
is based upon . Yet, such political gamesmanship by our federal leaders is obscuring an important truth - the
enusure that future development will mimize impacts to the environment and existing users. Of course,
principles of the National Ocean Policy are taking hold in states and regions across the country, even without the
meaningful support of Congress.
Ocean policies not popular
Eilperin 12 – the House of Representatives reporter, she covered the environment for the
national desk, reporting on science, policy and politics in areas including climate change, oceans,
and air quality
(11/04/2012, Juliet, “Attempt to sort out ocean policy draws fire”,
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/11/04/national-ocean-policy-faces-opposingtides/uQXXHyujnrOi1ilIEZb0xM/story.html)//spark
Partisan battles are engulfing the nation’s ocean policy , showing that
polarization over environmental issues doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. For years,
ocean policy was the preserve of wonks. But President Obama created the first national ocean policy, with a tiny White
House staff, and with that set off some fierce election-year fights. Conservative Republicans warn that the
administration is determined to expand its regulatory reach and curb the
extraction of valuable energy resources, while many Democrats, and their
environmentalist allies, argue that the policy will keep the ocean healthy and reduce conflicts over its use. The
wrangling threatens to overshadow a fundamental issue — the country’s patchwork approach to managing offshore
waters. Twenty-seven
federal agencies, representing interests as diverse as farmers
and shippers, have some role in governing the oceans. Obama’s July 2010 executive order set
up a National Ocean Council, based at the White House, that is designed to reconcile the competing interests of different
agencies and ocean users. The policy is already having an impact. The
council, for example, is trying to
broker a compromise among six federal agencies over the fate of defunct offshore
oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Recreational fishermen want the rigs, which attract
fish, to stay, but some operators of commercial fishing trawlers consider them a
hazard and want them removed. Still, activists invoking the ocean policy to press for federal limits on
traditional maritime interests are having little success. The Center for Biological Diversity cited the policy as a reason to
slow the speed of vessels traveling through national marine sanctuaries off the California coast. Federal officials denied the
petition. During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on ocean policy last year, the panel’s top Democrat, Rep.
Edward J. Markey (Mass.), said that “opposing
ocean planning is like opposing air traffic
control: You can do it, but it will cause a mess or lead to dire consequences.” Rep.
Steve Southerland II (R-Fla.), who is in a tight reelection race, retorted that the policy was “like air traffic control helping
coordinate an air invasion on our freedoms.” An environmental group called Ocean
Champions is spending
hundreds of thousands of dollars to unseat him. The sharp rhetoric puzzles academics such as
Boston University biologist Les Kaufman. He contributed to a recent study that showed that using ocean zoning
to help design wind farms in Massachusetts Bay could prevent more than $1
million in losses to local fishery and whale-watching operators while allowing
wind producers to reap $10 billion in added profits by placing the turbines in the best
locations. Massachusetts adopted its own ocean policy, which was introduced by Mitt Romney, the Republican governor at
the time, and later embraced by his Democratic successor, Deval L. Patrick. “The
whole concept of national
ocean policy is to maximize the benefit and minimize the damage. What’s not to love?”
Kaufman said, adding that federal officials make decisions about offshore energy production, fisheries and shipping
without proper coordination. Nearly a decade ago, two
bipartisan commissions called upon the
government to coordinate its decisions regarding federal waters, which extend
from the roughly three-mile mark where state waters end to 200 miles from
shore. When Romney moved to establish ocean zoning in 2005 in Massachusetts, he warned that without it there could
be “a Wild West shootout, where projects were permitted on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.” In Washington, however,
legislation to create an ocean zoning process failed. The policy set by Obama in 2010 calls for five regions of the country —
the Mid-Atlantic, New England, the Caribbean, the West Coast and the Pacific — to set up regional bodies to offer input.
White House Council for Environmental Quality spokeswoman Taryn Tuss said the
policy does not give the
federal government new authority or change congressional mandates. “It simply
streamlines implementation of the more than 100 laws and regulations that
already affect our oceans.” House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said he is
not opposed to a national ocean policy in theory. But he said he is concerned that the administration’s broad definition of
what affects the ocean — including runoff from land — could open the door to regulating all inland activities, because “all
water going downhill goes into the ocean. . . . That potential could be there.” The
House voted in May to
block the federal government from spending money on implementing the policy,
though the amendment has not passed the Senate. Two influential groups — anglers
and energy firms — have joined Republicans in questioning the administration’s
approach. In March, ESPN Outdoors published a piece arguing that the policy “could prohibit U.S. citizens from
fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.” The article, which convinced
many recreational fishermen that their fishing rights were in jeopardy, should have been labeled an opinion piece, the
editor said later. “Fishermen saw this as just another area where fishing was going to be racheted down,” said Michael
Leonard, director of ocean resource policy for the American Sportfishing Association, whose 700 members include the
nation’s major boat manufacturers, as well as fish and tackle retailers. Leonard added that the
White House has
solicited some input from anglers since launching the policy and that they will
judge the policy once its final implementation plan is released, after the election. The
National Ocean Policy Coalition — a group based in Houston that includes oil and
gas firms as well as mining, farming and chemical interests — has galvanized
industry opposition to the policy. Its vice president works as an energy lobbyist at the law firm
Arent Fox; its president and executive director work for the firm HBW Resources, which lobbies for energy and shipping
the public has not had enough
input into the development of the policy and that his group worries
about “the potential economic impacts of the policy on commercial or
recreational activity.” Sarah Cooksey, who is Delaware’s coastal-programs administrator and is slated to
interests. Brent Greenfield, the group’s executive director, said that
co-chair the Mid-Atlantic’s regional planning body, said the policy will streamline application of laws already on the
books. “ No
government wants another layer of bureaucracy ,” she said. In
Southerland’s reelection race, Ocean Champions has labeled the congressman “Ocean Enemy #1” and sponsored TV ads
against him. Jim Clements, a commercial fisherman in the Florida Panhandle district, has mounted billboards against
Southerland on the grounds his stance hurts local businesses. Southerland declined to comment for this article. Ocean
Champions President David Wilmot said that while most ocean policy fights are regional, this is “the first issue I’ve seen
that’s become partisan. I do not think it will be the last.”
Nuclear Power Shipping
Public opposition to nuclear pwoer
NIARS no date (Nuclear INformatIoN aND resource service,
http://www.nirs.org/falsepromises.pdf)//SQR
A 2005 pool found that
53 percent of Americans opposed the government promotion of
increased use of nuclear power.275 In February 2006, nuclear energy remained a
relatively unpopular option with only 44 percent in favor, while 86 percent of respondents
supported improved fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, 82 percent supported increased federal funding for research on
wind, solar and hydrogen technology, and 78 percent favored tax cuts to energy companies conducting research on these
alternative energy sources.2
Safety causes political uncertainity
Broder 11 (John Broder, March 13th, 2011,” U.S. Nuclear Industry Faces New
Uncertainty”,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/science/earth/14politics.html?scp=10&sq=white%20hous
e%20nuclear%20power%20japan&st=cse&_r=0)//SQR
Nuclear power, which still suffers from huge economic uncertainties and local
concerns about safety, had been growing in acceptance as what appeared to many to be a relatively benign,
proven and (if safe and permanent storage for wastes could be arranged) nonpolluting source of energy for the United
States’ future growth. But
even staunch supporters of nuclear power are now advocating
a pause in licensing and building new reactors in the United States to make sure
that proper safety and evacuation measures are in place. Environmental groups
are reassessing their willingness to see nuclear power as a linchpin of any future
climate change legislation. Mr. Obama still sees nuclear power as a major element of future American
energy policy, but he is injecting a new tone of caution into his endorsement.
OSD
Oil drilling sparks political controversy—Democrat opposition
Dloughy 13, Jennifer A. Dlouhy covers energy policy, politics and other issues for The
Houston Chronicle and other Hearst Newspapers from Washington, D.C. Previously, she reported
on legal affairs for Congressional Quarterly. She also has worked at The Beaumont Enterprise,
The San Antonio Express-News and other newspapers (Jennifer, “Democrats assail House
Republicans’ pro-drilling bills,” Fuel Fix, 11/19/13, http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/11/19/houserepublicans-push-pro-drilling-bills/)//ADravid
House Republicans on Tuesday kicked off a weeklong series of votes on
measures designed to promote domestic energy development, beginning with a
controversial bill that would accelerate the government’s permitting of oil and
gas projects on federal lands. Other measures in the pre-Thanksgiving lineup include a bill that would effectively bar the federal
WASHINGTON —
government from regulating hydraulic fracturing anywhere state rules already govern the process and legislation that would force the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission to make decisions on proposed natural gas pipelines within a year. The White House has issued veto threats against all three GOP-backed measures,
and none are expected to advance in the Democrat-controlled Senate. But all serve to put the House on record on key energy policy debates ahead of next year’s
elections. The House votes planned for Wednesday on the hydraulic fracturing bill will be the first ever taken specifically on the well completion process credited
with unlocking newly accessible oil and gas reserves nationwide. On Tuesday,
Democrats blasted the trio of
measures , with Colorado’s Jared Polis casting them as “messaging bills that aren’t going anywhere.” Related story: Feds cash in on domestic energy
development Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the House should be focused on more pressing
matters, given the recent surge in domestic oil and gas production. “There are more oil rigs in America today
than the rest of the world combined, yet we’re talking about energy security,” Hoyer
said. “We have it!” But Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., insisted that energy security and economic growth are top national priorities that are served
by the legislation. “Probably the biggest issue facing America that we have heard from our constituents … is the need to have a growing economy and jobs,”
Hastings said. “We have a chance to capture American energy and jobs with this legislation. It is certainly very, very important.” More federal land The bill debated
Tuesday would require the Interior Department to make a quarter of all nominated federal acreage available for leasing each year. Critics called the 25 percent
requirement “arbitrary,” but supporters said it is essential to ensure new, promising areas are made available for oil and gas development. It also would require the
government to sell new leases for research, development and demonstration of oil shale, primarily found in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, despite eroding industry
interest in that unconventional crude. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., also aims to speed up government permitting of oil and gas
projects on public lands, by giving the Interior Department a maximum of 60 days to review exploratory drilling applications before they would be automatically
deemed approved. Oil and gas industry representatives and their allies in Congress have complained that government permit reviews can stretch on for months
and even years. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, said the legislation is essential to “help get the government out of the way of progress.” ‘Completely irresponsible’
But
Democrats said the measure would unfairly promote oil and gas development on
federal lands above and beyond other activities, from grazing to recreational uses
such as hunting and skiing. “ This bill’s central premise is to allow oil and
gas companies to drill wherever and wherever they want to drill on
public lands,” Polis said. “This bill is completely irresponsible and
prioritizes the needs of the oil and gas industry over every other use
of our public lands , including . . .hunting, fishing (and) skiing.” Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., said the measure would
“tear down environmental protections and . . . restrict public participation in an
attempt to expand oil and gas production.” “These bills are nothing more
than reckless giveaways to big oil and gas companies that put
American families and the environment at risk, ” Capps added. Charging challengers Rep. Sheila
Jackson-Lee, D-Houston, took aim at a provision in the bill that would charge would-be challengers $5,000 for the right to protest individual government
decisions on oil and gas leases, drilling permits and rights of way. There currently is no charge to file such protests, and Jackson-Lee said the hefty new fee could
thwart legitimate challenges by landowners, farmers and others worried about nearby drilling projects. “A filing or documentation fee of this amount in many cases
is prohibitive and will discourage injured parties from taking action to protect their rights,” Jackson-Lee said. Hastings insisted that the “cost-recovery fee” would
help compensate the Bureau of Land Management for responding to the drilling protests. “These formal protests require a direct BLM response, using staff time,
energy and resources to address what is simply, often, a delaying tactic,” Hastings said. “We have seen over and over and over what I would call frivolous action by
people with lawsuits trying to slow down the process.”
Polarized positions on energy divide Congress—Democrat backlash
against drilling
Daly and Cappiello 12, Reporters for the Associated Press (Matthew and Dina,
“Republicans, Democrats at odds on energy issues,” Associated Press NORC Center for Public
Affairs Research, 6/14/12, http://www.apnorc.org/newsmedia/Pages/News+Media/republicans-democrats-at-odds-on-energy-issues.aspx)//ADravid
Republicans and Democrats seem to be living on different
planets when it comes to how to meet U.S. energy needs. Republicans
overwhelmingly push for more oil drilling. Democrats back conservation and new
energy sources such as wind and solar power. A survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center
for Public Affairs Research shows that the polarized positions on energy
that have divided Congress and emerged in the presidential campaign also run deep among the public. While
majorities in both parties say energy is an important issue, the poll shows that partisan identification is
closely tied to people's perceptions of the causes of the country's energy problems
and possible solutions. No other demographic factor — not race, age, gender or income level — is as consistently associated with opinions on
energy as political party identification. For example: — Three of four Democrats surveyed report that a major
reason for the county's energy problems is that industry does not do enough to
support clean energy. By comparison, 43 percent of the Republicans questioned believe that.
— Three of four Republicans in the poll cite government limits on drilling as a
major reason for energy problems, compared with 34 percent of Democrats. Also, 85
percent say it is a serious problem that the United States needs to buy energy
from other countries, but there's disagreement about why. Among Republicans in the poll, 65 percent say
the U.S. does not produce enough domestic energy to meet demand. Yet just over half the Democrats say people use too much
energy. Even on areas where there's majority agreement, a partisan
gap remains. For instance, there is broad backing for programs to help consumers learn to make more energy-efficient
WASHINGTON (AP) —
choices, but the support is 81 percent among Democrats and 57 percent among Republicans. Paul Bledsoe, a senior adviser with the
the results provide an unsettling
snapshot of a partisan rift that affects every aspect of policy and
politics . He said the big question is whether parties and candidates will acknowledge that they agree on a range of energy solutions and try to make
Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Clinton White House aide, said
progress, or keep up attacks intended to appeal to their political bases. The poll, made possible by a grant to the AP-NORC Center from the Joyce Foundation,
Both parties are playing to their
bases . So it's no surprise that presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other Republicans push for more
drilling for oil and natural gas , and President Barack Obama emphasizes renewable energy development as part
illuminates one driver of this campaign season's divisive political rhetoric:
of what he calls an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy. Republicans also are shining a spotlight on the failure of Solyndra, a California solar company that received a
half-billion dollar loan from the Obama administration and later went out of business. Just 4 in 10 Republicans support government incentive programs that give
money to energy companies to help them develop alternative energy sources. Two-thirds of Democrats support such programs. Overall, about 6 in 10 people
questioned think the government should be deeply involved in finding solutions to the energy problems, with 4 in 10 saying the government should be "extremely"
involved. By 79 percent to 42 percent, Democrats were nearly twice as likely as Republicans to think the government should be involved. About half of Democrats
in the poll think government should be "extremely" involved, compared with just one-quarter of Republicans. The survey showed partisans hold different ideas on
how the government should be involved. Democrats are more apt to favor incentive programs for consumers or energy companies. Republicans express support for
selfdescribed independent Democrat, said he opposes offshore drilling. "It doesn't really solve
anything. All it does is make more pollution," he said, adding that the government
should do more to promote solar energy and even raise gas taxes if necessary to increase
education programs aimed at consumers and allowing more drilling for oil and gas. Brent Sumsion of Soquel, Calif., a 63-year-old handyman and
conservation. Bobby Jones, also 63 and a mechanic from Seven Springs, N.C., supports increased drilling in order to cut dependence on foreign oil. "We have
enough (oil and gas) in this country that we can drill for a while and get what we need," Jones said, adding that offshore drilling would help create badly needed
jobs in eastern North Carolina. Jones, an independent, backs Romney in the presidential election, in part because of energy policies, such as his support for a
proposed oil pipeline from Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. Carol Browner, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency who
was Obama's top energy and climate adviser, said the partisan divide over energy makes difficult it to have a thoughtful conversation about
what makes sense for the country. "Ultimately it doesn't matter if you are Democrat or Republican — you pay your energy bill, you buy your
fuel-efficient car and you fill it up," Browner said. To that point, the poll found that 90 percent of Democrats and 87 percent of Republicans
say they've done something in the last year to save energy. The AP-NORC Center poll was conducted March 29 to April 25. It involved
landline and cellphone interviews with 1,008 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Growing gap between radical Republicans and left wingers on oil
drilling—Pew Research poll proves drilling will be a partisan wedge
issue
Lacey 12, Stephen Lacey is an editor at Greentech Media. Formerly, he was a reporter/blogger
for Climate Progress, where he wrote about clean energy policy, technologies, and finance. Before
joining CP, he was an editor/producer with RenewableEnergyWorld.com. He received his B.A. in
journalism from Franklin Pierce University (Stephen, “Clean Energy is Republican Political
Wedge, Pew Poll Finds,” Cleantechnica, 4/11/12, http://cleantechnica.com/2012/04/11/cleanenergy-is-republican-political-wedge-pew-poll-finds/)//ADravid
Energy has turned into a contentious campaign issue in 2012, pitting
“drill-baby-drill” against “clean energy now.” But multiple polls now
make clear that the clean energy issue is a winning one for progressives. The way the media
and cable TV frame the national debate may make it seem like there’s an even split between supporters of fossil fuels and supporters of renewable alternatives.
, a new poll from the Pew Research Center finds that clean
energy has far
more support than fossil fuels support across the political spectrum — except among
conservative Republican males. The poll illustrates how clean energy has become a wedge issue among
Republicans moving into the presidential election. This is precisely what has happened on climate (see
However
“Independents, Other Republicans Split With Tea-Party Extremists on Global Warming“). Pew found that 52% of Americans believe “alternative” resources are the
most important energy priority for the country. That’s still a substantial increase over oil, coal and gas, which received preferential support from 39% of
respondents. This poll shows that clean energy still has very strong bipartisan support. But that support has shifted in the last year, with an increase in Americans
saying domestic production of fossil fuels should be a top priority. With previous polls showing support for offshore drilling increasing as gas prices climb, that
shift isn’t much of a surprise. (It should be noted that multiple analyses, including one from the Associated Press, have shown no correlation between lower gas
prices and more drilling.) The poll showed a shift in favor of domestic fossil fuel production among a variety of voters. But the most striking change was among
Over the past year, there has been an increase in the
percentage of Republicans, particularly conservative Republicans, who view the
expansion of exploration and production of oil, coal and natural gas as a more
important priority for addressing the nation’s energy supply than the
development of alternative energy sources. Conservative Republicans now
prioritize traditional energy sources over alternative sources by a 65% to 26% margin; a year ago they
older, conservative Republican males:
were divided (47% oil, coal, natural gas vs. 43% alternative energy). In the current survey, men 50 and older say it is more important to expand exploration from
traditional energy sources, by 51% to 37%. A year ago, older men prioritized the development of alternative energy sources by a comparable margin (54% to 35%).
clearly a partisan gap between Republicans and
Democrats over fossil fuel production, this poll shows that it’s really
the Tea Party crowd that is the primary factor widening that gap. Support
Here’s the chart:
W hile there’s
for fossil fuels hasn’t grown nearly as much among moderate Republicans and Independents. These findings back up what we already know: The only voters who
. So talking
about clean energy and pushing federal clean energy policies, which still has solid
support among the rest of the electorate, can only be a political positive, making it a classic
wedge issue.
may get turned off by clean energy — conservative Republican males — would likely never support a progressive candidate anyway
The offshore oil drilling issue is bound to create controversy—
Democrats and environmentalists oppose drilling while Republicans
will think the policy doesn’t go far enough
Hobson 12, Reporter for E&E and EnergyWire (Margaret Kriz, “Obama's development plans
gain little political traction in years since Gulf spill,” E&E Publishing,
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059963022)//ADravid
President Obama is embracing the offshore oil and gas development policies he
proposed in early 2010 but were sidelined in the shadow of the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill. Two years after the BP PLC oil rig exploded, killing 11 people
and causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history, Obama's "all of the above"
energy policy includes offshore drilling provisions that are nearly identical to his
aggressive March 2010 drilling plan. Since the moratorium on offshore oil drilling ended in late 2010,
the administration expanded oil and gas development in the western and central
Gulf of Mexico and announced plans for lease sales in the eastern Gulf. The White House
appears poised to allow Royal Dutch Shell PLC to begin exploring for oil this summer in Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas and to open oil industry access to the
Cook Inlet, south of Anchorage. The administration is also paving the way for oil and gas seismic studies along the mid- and south Atlantic coasts, the first such
survey in 30 years. While opening more offshore lands to oil and gas development, the Obama administration has also taken steps to make offshore oil drilling
safer, according to a report card issued yesterday by Oil Spill Commission Action, an oversight panel formed by seven members of President Obama's oil spill
commission. That report criticized Congress for failing to adopt new oil spill safety laws but praised the Interior Department and industry for making progress in
A report
yesterday by Oceana charged that the measures adopted by government and industry
are "woefully inadequate." As the 2012 presidential campaign heats up and gasoline prices remain stuck near $4 per gallon,
Obama's offshore oil development policies aren't winning him any
political capital. The environmental community hates the drilling
proposals. The Republicans and oil industry officials complain that
the White House hasn't gone far enough. And independent voters are
confused by the president's rhetoric. According to the GOP political firm Resurgent Republic,
independent voters in Colorado and Virginia don't understand what
Obama's "all of the above" energy mantra means . The report said, however, that once the policy
improving offshore oil development safety, environmental protection and oil spill preparation. An environmental group was less complimentary.
was "described as oil, gas, coal, nuclear power, solar and other alternative energies, participants became enthusiastic and view such a strategy as credible and
necessary to becoming more energy independent." A recent Gallup poll indicated that
American voters are polarized on
energy issues. The survey found that 47 percent of the public believes energy development is more important than environmental protection, while 41
percent of the public ranks protecting the environment as a bigger priority. In that political climate, Obama's offshore oil development policies are not likely to
affect the nation's most conservative or liberal voters, noted Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "The environmentalists have
no place to go except Obama, and Obama isn't going to convince any conservatives or Republicans to back him" based on his oil and gas proposals, Sabato said.
"He's obviously aiming at swing independents," Sabato added. "He's trying to show that he's pursuing a middle path, the one many independents like. Maybe it will
work." Back to the original plan, minus 2 pieces Obama's all-of-the-above energy policy is in keeping with his pre-oil-spill offshore oil and gas development
proposal. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the White House slapped a six-month moratorium on all new oil and gas development. Since the moratorium
ended, Obama has systematically reintroduced most of the early oil development proposals. Two pieces of the old plan are missing. Obama backtracked on his
proposal to allow oil exploration off Virginia's coast. The new East Coast offshore plan lays the groundwork for seismic studies, but not drilling, along the mid- and
south Atlantic. The White House also dropped a proposal to allow exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico within 125 miles of Florida, an area off limits due to a
congressional moratorium. During 2010 negotiations, the administration offered to allow oil leasing in the region if Congress lifted the moratorium and passed a
. Since the Republicans
global warming bill. When the climate change legislation died, however, the drilling provision lost White House favor
took control of the House in 2011, GOP leaders have advanced a series of bills
that would go far beyond Obama's offshore oil drilling policies, essentially
allowing development along all U.S. shores. But those measures have been
thwarted by the Democrat-controlled Senate. The Republicans and
industry officials long for the offshore oil and gas plan floated by former
President George W. Bush during his last days in office. That proposal would have offered 31 federal lease sales and included regions off
the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. By comparison, Obama's 2012 to 2017 leasing blueprint includes a dozen sites in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico and excludes the
West Coast and northern East Coast. American Petroleum Institute officials say that Obama's policies have kept 87 percent of federal offshore acreage off limits to
oil and gas development. "We need more certainty in the process and knowledge that things are going to move forward at a much better pace so that companies can
plan for and make investments in U.S. projects," argued Erik Milito, API's group director for upstream and industry operations But White House officials take issue
with API's explanation. Interior Department officials say that thanks to Obama administration policies, more than 75 percent of undiscovered technically
recoverable offshore oil and natural gas resources will be open to exploration and development in the next five years. "Those who claim that the areas that will be
offered constitute few total acres aren't paying attention to where the oil and gas resources are," Heather Zichal, Obama's deputy assistant for energy and climate
change, wrote in a White House blog. "[T]hat's where we are focusing our attention, in places like the Western Gulf and the Central Gulf, an offshore area which,
Meanwhile, environmentalists are
fighting the administration's return to Obama's pre-oil spill energy policies.
Charging that the White House and Congress are ignoring the lessons of the BP
according to our resource estimates, has nearly double the resource potential of any other."
oil spill, the green groups are focusing their opposition on the president's plans to
advance oil and gas development along the Alaska shores and parts of the East Coast. "We're exactly where we were before the oil
spill, not only in terms of the amount of drilling that's happening but in terms of drilling safety and [oil spill] response capability," said Regan Nelson, senior
oceans advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The government lacks the resources necessary to police the industry. And Congress has failed to make
any new safety reforms following that horrific disaster."
Local backlash against seismic testing necessary for offshore drilling
Sturgis 14, Analyst for the Institute for Southern Studies (Sue, “Opposition mounts to seismic
testing for Atlantic oil and gas reserves,” Institute for Southern Studies, 4/18/14,
http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/04/opposition-mounts-to-seismic-testing-for-atlantic.html)//ADravid
BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster began unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico,
killing 11 workers and setting off an 87-day gusher that dumped an estimated 200
million gallons of oil into the coastal ecosystem. Though fishermen say catches are
still down due to the environmental damage caused by the spill, BP is back in action in the Gulf.
Last month it reached an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
lifting the ban that kept it from signing new drilling deals. Less than a week later, the company emerged
as the highest bidder for 24 of the Gulf blocks on sale. With a return to business as usual for Big Oil in the
Gulf of Mexico, the industry is now pressing to open up the southeastern Atlantic
Coast to exploration -- but it's meeting growing resistance from local
communities that would be most directly affected by expanded drilling. The first step toward oil and gas
drilling in the Atlantic is seismic testing, which involves using air guns to shoot compacted air to the ocean floor, creating
sound waves used to map undersea reserves. But the practice, which is currently banned in the Atlantic,
raises serious environmental and economic concerns , as it's known to
cause injuries to marine life and damage fisheries. The governors of North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia
This Sunday, April 20 marks four years since
are among those calling to allow seismic testing to proceed off their coasts. They appear to have won the support of the Department of Interior, which in February
published an environmental analysis that endorses seismic exploration for an area stretching from Delaware to Florida. But a growing number of coastal cities and
town have passed resolutions opposing seismic testing. They are Cape Canaveral, Fla.; Cocoa Beach, Fla.; Carolina Beach, N.C.; Nags Head, N.C.; Bradley Beach,
N.J.; and Red Bank, N.J. In addition, the city of St. Augustine Beach, Fla. voted unanimously to oppose seismic testing and wrote a letter to the federal Bureau of
Ocean Energy Management expressing its opposition, while Caswell Beach, N.C. approved a resolution expressing concern about seismic testing. Meanwhile,
110 state and local elected officials signed onto a letter sent this week
to President Obama and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell opposing
seismic testing. The signatories include mayors, city council members, county
commissioners and state lawmakers from Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland,
New Jersey, North Carolina and Virginia. Oceana, a conservation advocacy group that's involved in the fight
against seismic testing, expects more local officials to join the opposition in the coming
weeks. "We urge your administration to stop this process and focus on ensuring the vitality of vulnerable coastal
economies along the Atlantic Coast," the letter stated. " We cannot continue to put our
ocean environment, beaches, marine resources, and coastal economies at risk." The
elected leaders join 155 representatives of conservation and animal welfare
groups that have also signed onto a letter to Obama and Jewell opposing seismic
testing and calling for a transition to a clean renewable energy future. As part of its ongoing campaign against Atlantic drilling, Oceana this week conducted
what it calls a "nighttime visual projection demonstration" in Washington, D.C. The group teamed up with The Illuminator -- a cargo van equipped with video
projection equipment -- to display the phrases "#STOPTHEDRILL" and "DRILL SPILL REPEAT?" on government buildings including Union Station, the Postal
Museum, and the National Gallery of Art. "When it comes to offshore drilling in the U.S. one overarching theme stands out -- Drill, Spill, Repeat," said Claire
safer than it was four year ago, yet
President Obama is taking steps to expand this dirty and dangerous industry to
the Atlantic. If the President would simply stop to listen, he would hear that
coastal communities have no interest in turning the East Coast into a blast zone."
Douglass, Oceana's campaign director.
"Offshore drilling is no
Offshore Wind
GOP oppose wind tax credit and win for Obama
Takahashi 12 (Patrick K. Takahashi, he is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, Director Emeritus with the Hawaii
Natural Energy Institute of the University of Hawaii, former professor of engineering. Pat cofounded the Pacific International Center for
High Technology Research. He helped draft original bills in the U.S. Senate on hydrogen, wind power, and ocean thermal energy
conversion. He worked for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and for the NASA Ames Research Center on the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence. He was awarded the Bechtel Energy Award by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Spark Matsunaga
Memorial Award by the National Hydrogen Association, and the Ocean Pioneer Award by the Ocean Energy Council. Pat earned his B.S. in
Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University, June 6 th 2012, “Why is
windpower suddenly unpopular?”, http://planetearthandhumanity.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-is-windpower-suddenlyunpopular.html)//SQR
In Hawaii, across the nation and throughout the world, it seems like wind energy conversion systems
have suddenly become an issue on the level of new coal and nuclear facilities. In the
50th State, "Big Wind" is roundly being criticized and even Donald Trump is warning about
the evils of windpower, as related to China, tourism and Scotland. There were protesters
about him being a windbag. Hey, give him a break, as he's having other more important problems, like with Miss
Pennsylvania at his Miss USA pageant. Worse,
the U.S. Congress, as broken as it is, seems
currently negative on the production tax credit, the one piece of legislation that
will make or break this technology. So what is really happening? Nothing much new. For one, when the
Hawaii Natural Energy Institute advocated this form of renewable electricity a third of a century ago, we were criticized by
the Audubon Society (incidentally, they've since gotten smarter about this) for killing birds, resorts (in Kahuku) spoke
against this option at hearings for fear their investment would suffer from image problems, noise protesters were always
present, more than a few felt that these ugly machines would affect their aesthetics and a few more depicted at the left
protest (this was in Canada in April). I might add that wind energy (with geothermal and hydroelectric) is the ONLY "new"
sustainable option somewhat competitive with coal and nuclear. Solar PV remains three times the cost of wind. Let's look
at the matter of bird kills, for, apparently, the figure in Massachusetts is 100,000 murdered birds/year.
Here is the
reality: - glass windows: at least 100 million, and, perhaps up to a billion bird
deaths/year - house cats: 100 million/year - vehicles: 50 million to 100 million electric transmission lines: 174 million - hunting: more than 100 million Ever seen
any protests against glass windows, cats.....? Oh, by the way, there could well be around 400 billion birds in the world.
Nothing about energy is perfect. So will the production tax credit (2.2 cents/kWh for wind, geo and certain biomass) be
renewed this year by Congress? Senator Spark Matsunaga on the Finance Committee was the foremost advocate when I
worked for him. The actual enactment was in 1992, so this specific incentive has now been around for two decades. Read
the summary of Carl Rove (left, Republican strategist) and Robert Gibbs (right, former Obama communications director)
facing the American Wind Energy Association and weep. The
consensus is that President Obama
placing this bit of legislation as "must pass by August," effectively has killed this
from happening (as you know, the Republican party has a certain mandate to be
difficult on anything Obama until, perhaps, after the November election--so the
fate of the PTC will fall into the lame-duck session).
Offshore wind unattainable due to cost
IER 13 (Institute for Energy Research, June 4th 2013, “Administration Doubles Down on Expensive
Offshore Wind”, http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/administration-doubles-down-onexpensive-offshore-wind/) //SQR
The Interior Department announced today that the administration will hold the nation’s first offshore wind lease sale in
late July. The area scheduled for lease consists of 164,750 acres off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. In
response to this announcement, IER published a fact sheet on offshore wind energy development in the United States:
Offshore Wind Is Very, Very Expensive According to the Energy Information
Administration (EIA), offshore wind is 2.6 times more expensive as onshore wind
power and is 3.4 times more expensive than power produced by a natural gas
combined cycle plant. On a kilowatt hour basis, offshore wind power is estimated to cost
22.15 cents per kilowatt hour, while onshore wind is estimated to cost 8.66 cents
per kilowatt hour, and natural gas combined cycle is estimated to cost 6.56 per
kilowatt hour. Overnight capital costs (excludes financing charges) are 2.8 times higher for offshore wind than
onshore wind power. According to EIA, an offshore wind farm is estimated to cost $6,230 per
kilowatt, while those costs for an onshore wind farm are estimated to be $2,213
per kilowatt. 2.15.13-IER-Web-LevelizedCost-MKM Cape Wind Shows Just How Expensive Offshore Wind Is The
first offshore wind project to be proposed is Cape Wind, off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was proposed in 2001 as a 468megawatt wind farm consisting of 130 turbines, each with a maximum capacity of 3.6 megawatts, standing 440 feet tall in
the Nantucket Sound and covering 25 square miles. The project is estimated to cost $2.5 billion, or over $5,300 per
kilowatt. The original contract specifications with National Grid, the state of Massachusetts’ largest electric utility, and
Cape Wind is that the cost would start at 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour and then increase annually by 3.5 percent in a 15year deal, ending up more than 40 percent higher than EIA’s estimate. The starting price of 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour is
twice what the utility pays for power from fossil fuels and it would add 1.7 percent to the electricity bill of residential
customers. As of June 2013, Cape Wind has not been built. Offshore Natural Gas Produces More Energy than Offshore
Wind Projects IER produced an analysis comparing the potential energy production from a new offshore natural gas field
versus the potential offshore wind generation from Cape Wind. The analysis compared the potential energy production
from the Manteo natural gas prospect offshore North Carolina and the Cape Wind farm. Assuming the Manteo project
would produce as much natural gas as Independence Hub, it would supply 320 trillion Btu of energy annually, while the
Cape Wind project would supply 5.4 trillion Btu. Therefore, it would take about 59 Cape Wind developments to equal the
energy output of the Manteo project. More Examples of Potential Offshore Wind Projects in the United States NRG
Bluewater Wind was granted a federal lease by the Department of Interior last year to build a 450 megawatt offshore wind
farm about 11 nautical miles off the coast of Delaware. While the lease grants NRG Bluewater Wind Delaware LLC the
exclusive right to submit wind development plans for the area, the company still does not have investors or buyers for its
wind energy and is contemplating selling the lease. In
2011, NRG called the project financially
untenable because of dwindling federal incentives and its lack of investors. New
York State, which usually is an advocate of green energy, is foregoing an offshore
wind project due to its high cost. The project was to develop offshore wind farms for Great Lakes Ontario
and Erie, whose cost of construction would be recovered over the next 20 years by selling its generation to the New York
Power Authority. But the New York Power Authority turned the project down due to its expense. According to the New
York Power Authority, a 150-megawatt wind farm would cost between $1.2 billion and $2.0 billion to build and would cost
the Authority between $60 million and $100 million annually in power purchases, translating into a per kilowatt cost of
$8,000 to over $13,000, much higher than the estimated cost of an offshore wind farm by the Energy Information
Administration noted above. Other issues cited against the offshore wind farm are lowering values of shoreline properties,
ruining spectacular views, and harming birds and fish.
GOP views aff as a rip-off
Collins (Michael Collines, May 23rd, 2010, Sen. Lamar Alexander calls Mass. offshore wind farm 'a
taxpayer rip-off', http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/may/23/alexander-calls-offshore-wind-farm-ataxpayer/)//SQR
WASHINGTON - Clean-energy proponents who want to reduce the country's dependence on fossil fuels celebrated last
month when
the federal government approved the nation's first offshore wind farm
off Cape Cod, Mass. "It's obviously a history-making project," said Tom Vinson, director of federal regulatory
affairs for the American Wind Energy Association. But to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, the $1
billion Cape Wind project is a costly, colossal mistake. "It's a taxpayer rip-off," the
Maryville Republican said. "It creates a puny amount of very expensive electricity.
Taxpayers in Tennessee will be paying extra for it because of the taxpayer
subsidies. And it will destroy a very beautiful Nantucket Sound." Rising electricity prices and concerns over climate
change have given fuel to the wind energy movement in the United States, and supporters say the Obama administration's
decision to move ahead with the Cape Wind project is a sign the nation is ready to embrace a clean-energy resource that
European countries have been harnessing for years. While wind farms are in operation in several states, including
Tennessee, the 130-turbine Cape Wind project off Cape Cod will be the nation's first offshore wind farm. The turbines will
be arranged in a grid pattern over a 125-square-mile area - the closest will be about five miles from the shore - and will be
capable of producing 468 megawatts of wind power, enough to meet about 75 percent of the electricity demand for Cape
Cod and nearby islands. A dozen other offshore wind farms are in the works off the coasts of New Jersey, Rhode Island,
Delaware, North Carolina, Texas and other states. "There's at least a couple thousand megawatts that are in various stages
of development already," Vinson said. But while supporters say wind is a clean, inexhaustible energy resource,
detractors argue it produces just a small amount of electricity and defiles some of
the country's most scenic landscapes with towering metal monstrosities. "It's the
equivalent of putting hundreds of miles of 50-story towers with blades the size of
football fields on the top of the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway
and the Appalachian range," said Alexander, one of one of wind energy's most vocal critics in Congress.
Cape Wind will cover an area the size of Manhattan in New York but will generate
about the same amount of electricity that could be produced by a small nuclear
reactor one-tenth the size of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Nuclear
Reactor, Alexander said. "A more sensible way to produce carbon-free, clean energy
would be to have a small nuclear reactor," he said. "They are more reliable and would
be cheaper. It would be just as clean, and it would occupy much less space." The
Obama administration has said it would like to see wind produce at least 20 percent of the nation's electricity in 20 years,
but Alexander says that goal is preposterous
GOP opposition- aff tied to green energy
Sperry 12 (Todd, August 16th, 2012, “Wind farm gets US approval despite controversy,”
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/us/wind-farm-faa/index.html)//SQR
Washington (CNN) -- A massive offshore wind farm planned for Cape Cod that has generated fierce political and legal
controversy has cleared all federal and state regulatory hurdles. The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday the
Cape Wind project, the first of its kind in the United States, would not interfere with air traffic navigation and could
proceed with certain conditions.
Previous agency approvals were challenged in court,
including a ruling last year that forced the latest FAA safety evaluation. A leading
opposition group said another legal challenge was possible. The Obama administration first
approved the power generating project, which has now been on the books for more than a decade, in April 2010 despite
opposition from residents. Opponents over the years have included the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Democrat of
Massachusetts whose family compound is in Hyannis Port. 125 years of wind power Critics claim the wind farm with its
130 turbines would threaten wildlife and aesthetics of Nantucket Sound. Some
local residents also fear it
will drive down property values. The administration has pushed a "green energy"
agenda nationally as a way to create jobs and lessen U.S. dependence on oil
imports. That effort, however, has been sharply criticized by congressional
Republicans who have said certain high-profile projects are politically driven. They
also have skewered certain Energy Department programs that extended millions in taxpayer loans and other aid to
alternative energy companies or projects that faltered or did not meet expectations.
The Republican-led
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is investigating the
political assertions around Cape Wind as part of a broader review of "green
energy" projects supported by the administration.
Offshore wind creates controversy- legal battles prove
DiMugno 12 (Laura, August 17th, 2012, “With latest FAA ruling, is it full steam ahead for
Cape Wind?”, http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/08/17/with-latest-faa-ruling-is-it-fullsteam-ahead-for-cape-wind/)//SQR
Despite this latest decision, it remains to be seen whether the controversy
surrounding the proposed offshore wind farm will finally come to a close. Several
groups still oppose the project—the most vocal of which has been APNS—and
aviation concerns are only one component of their argument against Cape Wind.
Recently, APNS
went so far as to claim that there were political motivations behind
the FAA’s decision. “Cape Wind continues to face serious and growing problems,
with investigations being launched into the project’s political maneuvering, four
federal lawsuits pending, and a recent federal court decision to revoke Cape
Wind’s aviation safety permit,” the group stated on its website. (The last claim has been negated with this
latest FAA decision.)
Obama gets blamed for offshore wind controversy
Delamaide 10 (Darrel, April 30th , 2010, “U.S. Approval of Cape Cod Offshore Wind Project Will Not
End Controversy”, http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/U.S.-Approval-Of-Cape-CodOffshore-Wind-Project-Will-Not-End-Controversy.html)//SQR
The Obama administration approved the controversial Cape Wind project, which
calls for a wind farm of 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound and will be the first offshore wind project in the country. The
announcement Wednesday was not a complete surprise after President Barack Obama on Tuesday toured the factory in
Iowa that will supply the blades for the Cape Wind turbines. But
it is sure to generate more
controversy as opposition was voiced by everyone from environmental groups to
Native American tribes to Cape Cod residents, who are disturbed at the prospect
that they will see the wind turbines as specks on the horizon. The turbines will be five
miles from shore at their closest point, and 14 miles and their most distant.
Backlash from GOP- Obama uses influence to push it
Colman 12 (Zack, August 16th, 2012, “Long-delayed offshore wind farm gets approval despite
political pushback,” http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/243979-offshore-wind-farm-getsapproval-despite-political-pushback)//SQR
A large proposed wind farm off the Massachusetts coast gained regulatory
approval Wednesday amid complaints from GOP lawmakers that the White
House inappropriately pushed for its acceptance. The Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) determined the 130-turbine Cape Wind project, located in
the Nantucket Sound, posed no danger to air travel. The project has been in the planning process
for more than a decade. “This FAA Determination of No Hazard is extremely robust, comprehensive and complete,” Mark
Rodgers, spokesman for Cape Wind, told The Hill on Thursday. “We are pleased that the FAA was able to ignore political
pressure of project opponents and that they did their job in a professional way reaching the same decision they have on
three other occasions including twice under the Bush Administration to approve this project.” Rodgers said the FAA ruling
means Cape Wind is now fully permitted. He noted it is the only U.S. offshore wind farm with federal and state approval, a
commercial lease and a construction and operations plan. It also has power purchase agreements with Massachusetts
electric utilities. But whether
FAA’s ruling quiets some GOP lawmakers is uncertain.
They want to investigate possible administration pressure on the agency to
approve the project despite safety concerns from some FAA employees.
Republicans Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.), House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (Calif.) and Cliff Stearns (Fla.), a subcommittee
chairman on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, all have called for a
probe of Cape Wind. They say internal FAA documents show hesitancy about the
project’s ability to avoid interfering with low-flying planes. The lawmakers allege
the Obama administration used its influence to hush those fears.
OTEC
OTEC ain’t popular – too expensive and risky
Friedman 8 – Research Associate at Council on Foreign Relations
(Becca, 5/18/08, “Examining the Future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion”, Harvard Political
Review, http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/OTEC-News/Examining-the-future-ofOcean-Thermal-Energy-Conversion.html)//spark
Although it may seem like an environmentalist’s fantasy, experts
in oceanic energy contend that the
technology to provide a truly infinite source of power to the United States already
exists in the form of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). Despite enthusiastic
projections and promising prototypes, however, a lack of governmental support and the
need for risky capital investment have stalled OTEC in its research
and development phase . Despite the sound science, a fully functioning OTEC prototype has yet to be
developed. The high costs of building even a model pose the main barrier.
Although piecemeal experiments have proven the effectiveness of the individual components, a large-scale plant has never
been built. Luis Vega of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research estimated in an OTEC summary
a commercial-size five-megawatt OTEC plant could cost
from 80 to 100 million dollars over five years . According to Terry Penney, the
Technology Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the combination of cost and
risk is OTEC’s main liability. “ We’ve talked to inventors and other
constituents over the years, and it’s still a matter of huge capital
investment and a huge risk, and there are many [alternate forms of
energy] that are less risky that could produce power with the same
certainty ,” Penney told the HPR. Moreover, OTEC is highly vulnerable to the
elements in the marine environment. Big storms or a hurricane like
Katrina could completely disrupt energy production by mangling the OTEC
plants. Were a country completely dependent on oceanic energy, severe weather could be debilitating. In addition,
there is a risk that the salt water surrounding an OTEC plant would cause the
machinery to “rust or corrode” or “fill up with seaweed or mud,” according to a National
presentation that
Renewable Energy Laboratory spokesman. Even environmentalists have impeded OTEC’s development. According to
Penney, people do not want to see OTEC plants when they look at the ocean. When they see a disruption of the pristine
Given the risks, costs, and uncertain
popularity of OTEC, it seems unlikely that federal support for OTEC is
forthcoming . Jim Anderson, co-founder of Sea Solar Power Inc., a company specializing in OTEC technology,
marine landscape, they think pollution.
told the HPR, “Years ago in the ’80s, there was a small [governmental] program for OTEC and it was abandoned…That
There are a few people in the Department of
Energy who have blocked government funding for this. It’s not the Democrats,
not the Republicans. It’s a bureaucratic issue .” OTEC is not completely off the government’s radar,
philosophy has carried forth to this day.
however. This past year, for the first time in a decade, Congress debated reviving the oceanic energy program in the energy
bill, although the proposal was ultimately defeated. OTEC even enjoys some support on a state level.
Hawaii ’s National Energy Laboratory, for example, conducts OTEC research around the islands. For now, though,
American interests in OTEC promise to remain largely academic. The Naval Research Academy and Oregon State
University are conducting research programs off the coasts of Oahu and Oregon , respectively.
Dems don’t like it
P & GB 8 – Politics & Government Business
(7/28/08, “Blunt: Congress Now the Only Obstacle Between American People and Abundant,
Affordable and Homegrown Energy”,
http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1477646/blunt_congress_now_the_only_obstacle_bet
ween_american_people_and/)//spark
WASHINGTON, July 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — House
Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.)
issued the following statement today ahead of the presidents expected
announcement that he will lift an 18-year old executive ban on responsible energy
exploration along our nations Outer Continental Shelf. The decision leaves Congress as
the last remaining hurdle to producing billions of barrels of
American oil — and trillions of cubic feet of American natural gas —
for the American people . With the presidents decision today to lift the ban on the responsible
development of Americas deep-ocean energy, only one obstacle remains between the American
people and accessing the abundant reserves of homegrown energy that are
rightfully theirs: Democrats in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, reports indicate
the only energy-related legislation well see this week is a bill to
unlock an energy field weve already been exploring for 25 years,
along with an effort to advance the once-failed , and thoroughly discredited Use It or
Lose It language. Needless to say, neither plan will help the millions of American families struggling in a world of $4 gas,
$150 oil, and prohibitively high electricity rates. Back in 1990 when
this executive ban was first
established, oil sold for $18 and $1.20 could get you a gallon of gas just about
anywhere in the country. Almost a generation later, our nations energy outlook has changed
more than anyone couldve predicted back then – but reflexive Democratic
arguments against responsible, homegrown energy production have not. Enough is
enough. Its long-past time for this country to take a meaningful step toward the achievement of genuine energy security.
The president did his part today. Now its time for Congress to finally act.
AT Link N/U Ocean Policy Now
Those recent policies prove Obama will lose PC
Eilperin 6/17 – the House of Representatives reporter, she covered the environment for the
national desk, reporting on science, policy and politics in areas including climate change, oceans,
and air quality
(Juliet, 6/17/2014, “Obama proposes vast expansion of Pacific Ocean sanctuaries for marine life”,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-will-propose-vast-expansion-of-pacific-oceanmarine-sanctuary/2014/06/16/f8689972-f0c6-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html)//spark
President Obama
announced Tuesday his intent to make a broad swath of the central
Pacific Ocean off-limits to fishing, energy exploration and other activities. The
proposal, slated to go into effect later this year after a comment period, could create the
world’s largest marine sanctuary and double the area of ocean globally that is fully
protected. “I’m going to use my authority to protect some of our nation’s most
precious marine landscapes,” Obama said in a video to participants at a State Department conference,
adding that while the ocean is being degraded, “We cannot afford to let that happen. That’s why the United States is
leading the fight to protect our oceans.” The announcement — first reported earlier Tuesday by The Washington Post — is
part of a broader push on maritime issues by an administration that has generally favored other environmental priorities.
The oceans effort, led by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and White
House counselor John D. Podesta, is likely to spark a new political
battle with Republicans over the scope of Obama’s executive powers.
The president will also direct federal agencies to develop a comprehensive
program aimed at combating seafood fraud and the global black-market fish
trade. In addition, the administration finalized a rule last week allowing the public to nominate new marine sanctuaries
off U.S. coasts and in the Great Lakes. Expanding a marine monument? Obama has used his executive authority 11 times
to safeguard areas on land, but scientists and activists have been pressing him to do the same for untouched underwater
regions. President George W. Bush holds the record for creating U.S. marine monuments, declaring four during his second
term, including the one that Obama plans to expand. Under the proposal, according to two independent analyses, the
Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument would be expanded from almost 87,000 square miles to nearly
782,000 square miles — all of it adjacent to seven islands and atolls controlled by the United States. The designation
would include waters up to 200 nautical miles offshore from the territories. “It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to the pristine
ocean,” said Enric Sala, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence who has researched the area’s reefs and atolls since
Obama has faced criticism from a variety of groups — including cattle
ranchers, law enforcement officers and ATV enthusiasts — over his expansion of protections
for federal lands. The ocean area under consideration, by contrast,
encompasses uninhabited islands in a remote region with sparse economic
activity.
2005.
Those past “popular” policies were still controversial
Conathon 12 – the Director of Ocean Policy at American Progress
(Michael, 4/13/12 “Fish on Fridays: Sensible Ocean Policy Falling Victim to Political Games”,
http://americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2012/04/13/11433/fish-on-fridays-sensibleocean-policy-falling-victim-to-political-games/)//spark
Even in the bitterest partisan times, ocean
issues tend to exist outside the traditional political
boxing ring. They usually foster alliances based far more on geography than on
party affiliation. Members who represent coastal states and districts usually
recognize the value of sustaining and investing in our valuable ocean resources,
and they prioritize them more than their inland counterparts. But in recent months the
escalation of rancor and polarization encompassed even the normally temperate issue of ocean policy. Nowhere is
this tone more prevalent that in the House Committee on Natural Resources,
where Republicans have made President Barack Obama’s National Ocean Policy
public enemy number one. Ever since its roll-out, the policy—implemented by an
executive order in 2010 to provide a comprehensive set of guiding principles for
the “stewardship of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes”—has been taking
fire from opponents who cite it as an overreach that would spawn “job-killing
regulations,” according to Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and would mean the “death of all land-use planning” in this
country, in the words of Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA). Leaving aside the inherent contradiction espoused by Rep.
the National Ocean Policy’s nefarious efforts to develop a
framework for the great evil of ocean-use planning would in turn kill
the wonderful benefits of land-use planning—boiling these statements
down to their roots leaves little more than bald political rhetoric. In practice, the policy
McClintock—that
will improve scientific management and will help safeguard the commercial and recreational fishing industries—some of
the most fundamental drivers of our ocean economy. Rep. Hastings, who chairs the Committee on Natural Resources, and
Rep. McClintock both hail from coastal states, yet neither of the regions they represent in Congress actually touch the
Pacific Ocean. Still, the
rivers that run through their districts ultimately terminate in the
sea, and new findings are proving regularly what we already knew—what enters
those rivers flushes into the ocean and directly affects all facets of marine life,
including our fisheries. Rep. Hastings has held multiple hearings about the National Ocean Policy in his committee this
year, repeatedly questioning administration officials, scientists, industry members, and advocates about what he sees as
an authoritarian overreach and a prime example of the regulatory stranglehold the Obama administration is putting on
America’s economic growth. (In the interest of full disclosure, I testified before Rep. Hastings’s Committee on October 29,
2011.) On April 2 Rep. Hastings sent a letter to his colleagues in the House Appropriations Committee—the holders of the
congressional purse strings—asking them to “prohibit the use of funds for the implementation of the National Ocean
Policy.” On the whole, many
fishing industry groups, including the regional fishery
management councils tasked with developing fishery management plans, have
expressed concern over the policy since its inception because they feared their
voices would not be heard during the development of specific policy
recommendations. Since the initial proposal was announced, the administration has taken steps
to alleviate those concerns, including formally incorporating the councils in
regional planning efforts. Despite these improvements, Rep. Hastings has been joined in his effort to defund
the policy by a coalition of ocean and inland industry groups, including commercial and recreational fishing organizations.
In their letter the groups call out potential benefits of a national ocean policy
“designed to stimulate job creation and economic growth while conserving the
natural resources and marine habitat of our oceans and coastal regions.” Then, in the
next sentence, they contradict this desire by calling for a “pause in implementation” of
President Obama’s ocean policy, which explicitly shares those goals. In this letter Rep.
Hastings also says the policy is “especially alarming” because it “stretches far inland following rivers and their tributaries
upstream for hundreds of miles.” But of course it stretches upstream! There
is no impermeable layer
dividing salt water from fresh. This is a fundamental reason why we need the
policy in the first place. In fact, the policy is designed specifically to ensure adequate
and efficient coordination between the agencies responsible for inland activities
that affect ocean resources and the agencies that oversee the ocean activities
themselves. The news this week provided specific examples of why such coordination is necessary. Pesticide use was
found to affect Pacific salmon populations, and ocean acidification was proven to stunt oyster growth. These may seem
like obvious conclusions to draw, but they both exemplify the difficulty in differentiating between oceans and lands.
Similar to the estuarine boundary between salt water and fresh (how salty can fresh water
be before it becomes seawater?) our jurisdictional boundaries are equally nebulous. President
Obama famously (if incorrectly) noted this blurring of the lines during his 2011 State of the Union address when he
famously poked fun at the government’s management of salmon. “The
Interior Department handles
salmon when they’re in freshwater, but the Commerce Department handles them
in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked,” he
quipped to polite laughter in the House chamber and rolling echoes of punditry in the days after the speech. The reality of
salmon management is far more sensible. The Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration is actually responsible for salmon species management throughout their range, though the Department of
the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service does manage some salmon habitat programs. Yet
the point remains
that what happens upstream in salmon runs can have a dramatic effect on the
survival of one of the most valuable fisheries in the country. Thus it makes a great
deal of sense that we should coordinate efforts across federal agencies to manage
issues that transcend traditional boundaries. For example: If pesticides make life more difficult for
salmon, then the pesticide regulators should be talking to the fisheries biologists to figure out how to minimize that
impact. This
is precisely the kind of interagency collaboration the National Ocean
Policy is designed to facilitate. Further, Hastings’s efforts to defund the policy’s
recommendations not only would prevent government operations from becoming
more efficient by collaborating across traditional agency boundaries but could
also have devastating ramifications for the day-to-day programs that improve
fishery management and make life better for fishermen. Cutting funding as Rep. Hastings has
requested risks eliminating funding for many of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s existing
programs that fishermen rely on or that could greatly enhance the understanding of what factors other than fishing
pressure are causing fish stocks to decline and prevent their rebuilding. Specifically, the National Ocean Policy’s Draft
Implementation Plan calls for: Sustaining
ocean observing systems that provide critical
data for fishery stock assessments Conducting research on what stressors (habitat
degradation, pollution, global climate change, etc.) affect fish stocks other than fishing mortality
Prioritizing a National Shellfish Initiative to investigate potential ecosystem and economic benefits of shellfish
aquaculture Identifying
key ecosystem protection areas to enhance the quality of
habitat that provides sanctuary and nurseries for the “more than half of all fish
caught in US waters [that] depend on the estuaries and coastal wetlands at some
point in their life cycles” Understanding and combatting hypoxia (lack of oxygen) caused by polluted runoff
from rivers and streams that can lead to massive fish kills, harmful algal blooms, and other phenomena that adversely
affect fish populations These
programs are not new, and administration officials have
been abundantly clear in their testimony before Congress and, in some cases, in
the face of withering interrogation, that the National Ocean Policy does not create
any new regulations for how we use our ocean space. Healthy oceans and coasts
are among the strongest economic drivers and most valuable resources our
nation possesses. The National Ocean Policy recognizes this fact and sets forth a
proactive framework to streamline government involvement, eliminate
duplication of effort, and ensure taxpayers get more value for their dollars—
exactly what small government Republicans claim they want. Maybe next time we should
get Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to propose it.
Affirmative
Won’t Pass – 2ac
Won’t Pass –
Cantor Loss generates momentum to block reauthorization
Memoli and Puzzanghera 6/24
Michael A. Memoli has worked in the Los Angeles Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau since 2010,
and now spends most of his time in the halls of the Capitol covering Congress.Jim Puzzanghera
writes about business and economic issues from the Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau. “Shift in
GOP leadership leaves Export-Import Bank at risk of closing”
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-export-import-bank-20140625-story.html#page=1
A tough fight two years ago led to the bank's reauthorization despite strong
Republican opposition. The bank had a key ally then in House Majority Leader
Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who helped forge a compromise.¶ But incoming Majority
Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), who was selected after Cantor's stunning primary loss
this month to a tea party Republican, said over the weekend that he favors allowing the
bank's charter to expire.¶ "It's something that the private sector can be able to do," McCarthy
told "Fox News Sunday."¶ That gave momentum to a push in recent weeks led by Rep. Jeb
Hensarling (R-Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, to block the
bank's reauthorization.
Closed until midterms
Todd et all 6/26
Chuck Todd, Mark Murrary, and Carrie Dann, June 26th, 2014, “Stick a Fork in this Congress: It's
Done Until Midterms”, http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/stick-fork-congress-itsdone-until-midterms-n141481//SQR
Sick a fork in this Congress; it’s done at least until the midterms (and maybe until Jan. 2017)
Mark yesterday, June 25, on your calendars: It was the day Congress all but closed up
shop to focus on the midterms -- after House Speaker John Boehner announced he would
introduce legislation next month to authorize a lawsuit against President Obama over his executive
actions in office. “President Obama has circumvented the Congress through executive action, creating his own laws and excusing himself
from executing statutes he is sworn to enforce,” he wrote. Tellingly, Boehner’s letter didn’t cite a specific example of illegal or
how do
you expect Congress to get anything done for the rest of the year when the House
has decided to sue the president? Immigration reform? Forget about it (and it was already on life support). Any other
unconstitutional executive action, but his aides say the suit will likely focus on the health-care laws and energy regulations. But
big items? Done. Of course, there’s always the possibility that SOMETHING might take place during the lame duck. But only the stuff that
Republicans have signaled they’re
done working with the White House and Democrats. And the White House and Dems
HAS to get done to avoid operational shutdowns. Yet for now, House
are pretty much saying the same thing. “I’m not sure an announcement that House Republicans are preparing a taxpayer-funded lawsuit
against the president for doing his job is going to be warmly received by the American public,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest
said yesterday.
Won’t Pass – GOP
Free-market Republicans oppose
Lane 6/25
Charles Lane an American journalist and editor who is an editorial writer for The Washington
Post and a regular guest on Fox News Channel “The Export-Import Bank faces extinction under
new GOP” June 25, 2014 leadership”http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-lanethe-export-import-bank-faces-extinction-under-new-gop-leadership/2014/06/25/c7615b38fbd0-11e3-932c-0a55b81f48ce_story.html
Now Ex-Im suddenly faces extinction: Its charter expires Sept. 30, and the agency’s
best friend in the House Republican leadership, former majority leader Eric Cantor
(Va.), who shepherded a bipartisan reauthorization bill in 2012, lost his GOP primary this
month. Ex-Im must contend instead with free-market Republicans such as Jeb
Hensarling (Tex.), chairman of the committee that oversees Ex-Im, and a new majority leader,
Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who has abandoned his past support for Ex-Im in deference to the tea
party.
Bank Bad
Lane 6/25 Charles Lane an American journalist and editor who is an editorial writer for The
Washington Post and a regular guest on Fox News Channel
“The Export-Import Bank faces extinction under new GOP” June 25, 2014
leadership”http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-lane-the-export-import-bankfaces-extinction-under-new-gop-leadership/2014/06/25/c7615b38-fbd0-11e3-932c0a55b81f48ce_story.html
Say what you want about the tea party, its critique of Ex-Im Bank as “crony capitalism” has a lot
going for it; President Obama himself singled out Ex-Im as an example of “corporate welfare”
when he was running for president in 2008 — although his administration, and most
congressional Democrats, support it now.
Ex-Im defenders from the International Association of Machinists union to the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce are bombarding Congress and the media with the message that Ex-Im is a realistic
instrument of national policy, without which Boeing and other U.S. firms could not compete
against heavily subsidized European companies, such as Airbus.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs depend on these exports, the argument goes, and Ex-Im
made $1 billion last year from fees for loan guarantees and the like, so the U.S. economy gets all
those benefits and it doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime.
Has Ex-Im finally discovered the elusive free lunch? Suppose it’s true, as the bank reports, that
205,000 U.S. workers owed their employment to Ex-Im-supported exports in fiscal 2013. This is
not evidence of job creation; it’s evidence of governmentally-assisted job allocation. Resources
that Ex-Im helped steer to Boeing, et al., might have created the same number of jobs, or more, at
other firms.
Indeed, the first crack in a formerly united front of business support for Ex-Im appeared when
Delta Airlines complained — plausibly — that Ex-Im-backed sales of Boeing jets to state-owned
competitors abroad put Delta and its workers at a competitive disadvantage.
To fight the “bank of Boeing” stigma, Congress has required Ex-Im to allocate more of its portfolio
(up to $140 billion under current law) to small business and “green” exports. No doubt these
quotas spread Ex-Im largesse among more businesses — and congressional districts — thus
broadening its political base.
Economically, though, nothing changes. Government is still picking winners and losers; it’s just
picking more of them, in more markets, with more opportunities for bureaucratic decisionmaking, lobbying and, now and then, corruption — like the alleged bribery of an Ex-Im official by
a construction-equipment exporter that the Ex-Im inspector general is investigating.
The no-cost-to-the-taxpayer argument is overblown, too. If Ex-Im backs loans that the private
sector would not otherwise make, then, by definition, its portfolio is risky. Yet under existing law
the federal budget accounts for Ex-Im’s loans as if they were as safe as Treasury debt. According
to the Congressional Budget Office, a more accurate measure known as “fair value accounting,”
which factors in foreseeable business cycle downturns, would show that Ex-Im adds $2 billion to
the deficit over the next decade, rather than reducing it by $14 billion, as currently claimed.
The strongest argument for Ex-Im is that the United States can’t unilaterally disarm in a world
where both buyers and sellers expect government intervention — not only from Europe, but also
China and Japan — in the market for big-ticket items such as planes, nuclear reactors and
locomotives.
It is an undeniably realistic contention, if not a principled one — all the more reason it might yet
prevail. The Senate leans pro-Ex-Im. Forty-one House Republicans have signed a letter promising
to back a bill if GOP leaders bring it to the floor, and most House Democrats are already on board.
Even if abolition is impossible, Ex-Im’s critics might have leverage to win real reforms, starting
with fair-value risk accounting in the budget and an end to quotas for small business and green
energy.
Ultimately, the best hope may be to negotiate tougher international rules against export subsidies,
so every country’s companies can compete on their merits — and no country’s taxpayers are on
the hook.
AT Economy Impact
Reauthorization is not necessary – private sector will fill in
James 12 – trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade
Policy Studies (October 2012, Sallie, “Ending the Export-Import Bank”,
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/export-import-bank#7)//spark
However, that is only one side of the equation. The
bank does not create the resources to provide
financing out of thin air: the money comes from taxes or the repayment fees from
previous loans, which would otherwise flow to the U.S. Treasury. In that sense, the
bank only redistributes resources by taking them from other areas of the economy. It reallocates capital
that would otherwise be available for other uses. When the bank diverts resources to politically
selected activities, economic efficiency is lost unless the reallocation corrects a true market failure. But there is no
reason to think that the Ex-Im Bank knows how to better deploy resources than
consumers, investors, and businesses in private markets. Ex-Im Bank supporters often say
that the bank creates jobs without acknowledging any offsetting losses to the rest of the economy. Thus the 227,000 jobs
that Hochberg claims to have created are not necessarily "net jobs" that would not exist in a world without the Ex-Im
Bank. The relevant question is whether the Ex-Im Bank's activities create more value—measured in terms of jobs, or
the activities of the bank have no
discernible net impact on the number of jobs in the U.S. economy. In
many cases, Ex-Im–backed sales would have been completed anyway with
private financing. The bank says that it tries to avoid displacing private-sector finance, but it can't avoid
exports, or economic growth—than they destroy. At best,
displacement entirely. Because the Ex-Im Bank is ready to step in with financing, no one can know what terms might have
been offered by private lenders had the bank not existed.
Cant solve- fraud allegations
Katz 6/24
Diane Katz, who has analyzed and written on public policy issues for more than two decades, is a
research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation, “At Least 74 Cases of Fraud and
Corruption at Ex-Im Bank Since 2009”, http://dailysignal.com/2014/06/24/fraud-corruptionrampant-ex-im-bank/)//SQR
June 24, 2014 On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that four employees of the Export-Import Bank have been removed in recent
months amid allegations of kickbacks and other corruption. But the Journal article tells only part of the story. Based on a review of
government documents, The Heritage Foundation has determined that there have been at least 74 cases since April 2009 in which bank
officials were forced to act on the basis of “integrity” investigations by the Office of Inspector General. Dozens of other fraud cases involving
Ex-Im beneficiaries have been referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution. The revelations come at a particularly vulnerable time
for the government agency, which is facing growing opposition in Congress over reauthorization. Ex-Im’s charter will expire on Sept. 30,
and key House leaders oppose it, including newly elected Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Texas Republican Rep. Jeb
Fraud and corruption are among a long list of
operational problems at the bank, which is a conduit for corporate welfare and
beset by mismanagement, inefficiency and risk. In a 2013 report to Congress, the Office of Inspector
General characterized Ex-Im as exhibiting “weaknesses in governance and internal controls for business operations.” An
examination of Ex-Im fraud cases reveals a disturbing pattern of carelessness in
doling out taxpayer subsidies. According to the Journal, four employees are under investigation for accepting
kickbacks and gifts and improperly steering federal contracts to favored firms. Such misconduct is an ever-present
risk when government bureaucrats control billions of dollars in subsidies that
confer a competitive advantage to favored companies. The latest report to Congress noted the
Hensarling, chairman of the Financial Services Committee.
dismissal of two employees and a letter of reprimand against another in a six-month period as a result of the IG’s investigations.
PC not key
PC not real – ideology outweighs
Dickinson 9 (Matthew, professor of political science at Middlebury College and taught
previously at Harvard University where he worked under the supervision of presidential scholar
Richard Neustadt, 5/26, Presidential Power: A NonPartisan Analysis of Presidential Politics,
“Sotomayor, Obama and Presidential Power,”
http://blogs.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2009/05/26/sotamayor-obama-andpresidential-power/)
What is of more interest to me, however, is what her selection reveals about the
basis of presidential power. Political scientists, like baseball writers evaluating
hitters, have devised numerous means of measuring a president’s influence in
Congress. I will devote a separate post to discussing these, but in brief, they often
center on the creation of legislative “box scores” designed to measure how many
times a president’s preferred piece of legislation, or nominee to the executive
branch or the courts, is approved by Congress. That is, how many pieces of
legislation that the president supports actually pass Congress? How often do
members of Congress vote with the president’s preferences? How often is a
president’s policy position supported by roll call outcomes? These measures,
however, are a misleading gauge of presidential power – they are a better indicator
of congressional power. This is because how members of Congress vote on a
nominee or legislative item is rarely influenced by anything a president does.
Although journalists (and political scientists) often focus on the legislative
“endgame” to gauge presidential influence – will the President swing enough votes
to get his preferred legislation enacted? – this mistakes an outcome with actual
evidence of presidential influence. Once we control for other factors – a member
of Congress’ ideological and partisan leanings, the political leanings of her
constituency, whether she’s up for reelection or not – we can usually predict how
she will vote without needing to know much of anything about what the president
wants. (I am ignoring the importance of a president’s veto power for the
moment.) Despite the much publicized and celebrated instances of presidential
arm-twisting during the legislative endgame, then, most legislative outcomes
don’t depend on presidential lobbying. But this is not to say that presidents lack
influence. Instead, the primary means by which presidents influence what
Congress does is through their ability to determine the alternatives from which
Congress must choose. That is, presidential power is largely an exercise in agendasetting – not arm-twisting. And we see this in the Sotomayer nomination.
Barring a major scandal, she will almost certainly be confirmed to the Supreme
Court whether Obama spends the confirmation hearings calling every Senator or
instead spends the next few weeks ignoring the Senate debate in order to play
Halo III on his Xbox. That is, how senators decide to vote on Sotomayor will
have almost nothing to do with Obama’s lobbying from here on in (or lack
thereof). His real influence has already occurred, in the decision to present
Sotomayor as his nominee
Winners Win
Winners win
Singer 9 – Juris Doctorate candidate at Berkeley Law (Jonathon, “By Expending Capital,
Obama Grows His Capital,” 3/3/2009, http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/3/3/191825/0428)
From the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey: Despite the country's struggling economy and vocal opposition to
some of his policies, President Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high. Two-thirds feel hopeful about his
leadership and six in 10 approve of the job he's doing in the White House. "What is amazing here is how much political
capital Obama has spent in the first six weeks," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with
Republican pollster Bill McInturff. "And against that, he
stands at the end of this six weeks with as
much or more capital in the bank." Peter Hart gets at a key point. Some believe that political
capital is finite, that it can be used up. To an extent that's true. But it's important
to note, too, that political capital can be regenerated -- and, specifically, that
when a President expends a great deal of capital on a measure that was difficult
to enact and then succeeds, he can build up more capital. Indeed, that appears to
be what is happening with Barack Obama, who went to the mat to pass the
stimulus package out of the gate, got it passed despite near-unanimous
opposition of the Republicans on Capitol Hill, and is being rewarded by the
American public as a result. Take a look at the numbers. President Obama now has a 68 percent favorable
rating in the NBC-WSJ poll, his highest ever showing in the survey. Nearly half of those surveyed (47 percent) view him
very positively. Obama's Democratic Party earns a respectable 49 percent favorable rating. The Republican Party,
however, is in the toilet, with its worst ever showing in the history of the NBC-WSJ poll, 26 percent favorable. On the
question of blame for the partisanship in Washington, 56
percent place the onus on the Bush
administration and another 41 percent place it on Congressional Republicans. Yet
just 24 percent blame Congressional Democrats, and a mere 11 percent blame the Obama administration. So at this point,
with President Obama
seemingly benefiting from his ambitious actions and the
Republicans sinking further and further as a result of their knee-jerked opposition to that agenda,
More evidence – Winners win
Dickerson 13 (John, 1/18/2013, “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American
politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party,”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/01/barack_obama_s_second_i
naugural_address_the_president_should_declare_war.single.html)
On Monday, President Obama will preside over the grand reopening of his administration. It
would be altogether fitting if he stepped to the microphone, looked down the mall, and let out a
sigh: so many people expecting so much from a government that appears capable of so little. A
second inaugural suggests new beginnings, but this one is being bookended by dead-end debates.
Gridlock over the fiscal cliff preceded it and gridlock over the debt limit, sequester, and budget
will follow. After the election, the same people are in power in all the branches of
government and they don't get along. There's no indication that the president's clashes
with House Republicans will end soon. Inaugural speeches are supposed to be huge and stirring.
Presidents haul our heroes onstage, from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. George
W. Bush brought the Liberty Bell. They use history to make greatness and achievements seem like
something you can just take down from the shelf. Americans are not stuck in the rut of the day.
But this might be too much for Obama’s second inaugural address: After the last four years, how
do you call the nation and its elected representatives to common action while standing on the
steps of a building where collective action goes to die? That bipartisan bag of tricks has been
tried and it didn’t work. People don’t believe it. Congress' approval rating is 14 percent, the
lowest in history. In a December Gallup poll, 77 percent of those asked said the way Washington
works is doing “serious harm” to the country. The challenge for President Obama’s speech is
the challenge of his second term: how to be great when the environment stinks.
Enhancing the president’s legacy requires something more than simply the clever application of
predictable stratagems. Washington’s partisan rancor, the size of the problems facing
government, and the limited amount of time before Obama is a lame duck all point to a
single conclusion: The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about
bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If
he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat. President Obama could,
of course, resign himself to tending to the achievements of his first term. He'd make sure health
care reform is implemented, nurse the economy back to health, and put the military on a new
footing after two wars. But he's more ambitious than that. He ran for president as a one-term
senator with no executive experience. In his first term, he pushed for the biggest overhaul of
health care possible because, as he told his aides, he wanted to make history. He may already have
made it. There's no question that he is already a president of consequence. But there's no sign he's
content to ride out the second half of the game in the Barcalounger. He is approaching gun
control, climate change, and immigration with wide and excited eyes. He's not going for
caretaker. How should the president proceed then, if he wants to be bold? The Barack Obama of
the first administration might have approached the task by finding some Republicans to deal
with and then start agreeing to some of their demands in hope that he would win some of their
votes. It's the traditional approach. Perhaps he could add a good deal more schmoozing with
lawmakers, too. That's the old way. He has abandoned that. He doesn't think it will
work and he doesn't have the time. As Obama explained in his last press conference, he thinks
the Republicans are dead set on opposing him. They cannot be unchained by schmoozing. Even
if Obama were wrong about Republican intransigence, other constraints will limit the chance for
cooperation. Republican lawmakers worried about primary challenges in 2014 are not
going to be willing partners. He probably has at most 18 months before people start
dropping the lame-duck label in close proximity to his name. Obama’s only remaining
option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his
ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of
clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side
with their coalition's most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will
leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray. This theory of political transformation rests on the
weaponization (and slight bastardization) of the work by Yale political scientist Stephen
Skowronek. Skowronek has written extensively about what distinguishes transformational
presidents from caretaker presidents. In order for a president to be transformational, the old
order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves. Obama's gambit in
2009 was to build a new post-partisan consensus. That didn't work, but by exploiting the
weaknesses of today’s Republican Party, Obama has an opportunity to hasten the
demise of the old order by increasing the political cost of having the GOP
coalition defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers,
supporters of “self-deportation” and the pure no-tax wing