Politics - Gonzaga 2014

Gonzaga Debate Institute 14 1
Brovero & Lundeen Politics Core
****Politics Disadvantage

Notes
Whats here?
Links, internal links, theory, impacts, aff answers. This is a presidential agenda scenario. The midterms
file will be produced separately.
Where can I find link turns?

For link turns, you should look in the NEG LINK sections, and in the files for the individual affs. For
many aff areas and plans there are link arguments in each direction, organized in the link sections of the
file.
What is the impact scenario?

The impact scenario is strict NSA reform bad. NSA reforms are being debated to determine how to
reduce the impacts on privacy (which Edward Snowden revealed last summer). There are some in the
Senate calling for strict reforms, which this disad argues would weaken the NSA. Right now, looser
reforms will pass, which will allows the NSA to continue to function effectively with regards to terrorism.
You can say strict reform is bad because it makes NSA less effective, or it might collase NSA
reauthorization altogether, resulting in *no* NSA.

NSA Reform

1NC
A. Uniqueness - NSA reform coming now Obama political capital key to a
middle of the road reform
Feaver, Duke University Political Science and Public Policy professor, 14
[Peter Feaver, 1/17/14, Foreign Policy, Obama Finally Joins the Debate He Called For,
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/01/17/obama_finally_joins_the_debate_he_called_for,
accessed 7/12/14, GNL]
Today President Barack Obama finally joins the national debate he called for a long time ago but
then abandoned: the debate about how best to balance national security and civil liberty. As I
outlined in NPR's scene-setter this morning, this debate is a tricky one for a president who wants to
lead from behind. The public's view shifts markedly in response to perceptions of the threat, so a
political leader who is only following the public mood will crisscross himself repeatedly.
Changing one's mind and shifting the policy is not inherently a bad thing to do. There is no absolute and
timeless right answer, because this is about trading off different risks. The risk profile itself shifts in
response to our actions. When security is improving and the terrorist threat is receding, one set of tradeoffs is appropriate. When security is worsening and the terrorist threat is worsening, another might be.
It is likely, however, that the optimal answer is not the one advocated by the most fringe position. A
National Security Agency (NSA) hobbled to the point that some on the far left (and, it must be
conceded, the libertarian right) are demanding would be a mistake that the country would regret
every bit as much as we would regret an NSA without any checks or balances or constraints.
Getting this right will require inspired and active political leadership. To date, Obama has preferred to
stay far removed from the debate swirling around the Snowden leaks. This president relishes
opportunities to spend political capital on behalf of policies that disturb Republicans, but, as former
Defense Secretary Robert Gates's memoir details, Obama has been very reluctant to expend political
capital on behalf of national security policies that disturb his base. Today Obama is finally
engaging. It will be interesting to see how he threads the political needle and, just as importantly,
how much political capital he is willing to spend in the months ahead to defend his policies.
B. Link Plan hurts Obama because *INSERT LINK

C. Internal Links
1. Obama political capital key to stop Senate modifications modifications crush
House support and wipeout NSA effectiveness
Hattem, The Hill, 5/25/14

[Julian, 5/25/14, The Hill, NSA reform to be fight of the summer,
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/207143-nsa-reform-to-be-senate-fight-of-the-summer, accessed
7/12/14, GNL]
Civil libertarians who say the House didnt go far enough to reform the National Security Agency
are mounting a renewed effort in the Senate to shift momentum in their direction.
After compromises in the House bill, the NSAs critics are buckling down for a months-long fight in
the Senate that they hope will lead to an end to government snooping on Americans.
This is going to be the fight of the summer, vowed Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel with the
American Civil Liberties Union.
If advocates are able to change the House bills language to prohibit NSA agents from collecting
large quantities of data, then thats a win, he added.
The bill still is not ideal even with those changes, but that would be an improvement, Rottman
said.
The USA Freedom Act was introduced in both the House and Senate last autumn, after Edward
Snowdens revelations about the NSAs operations captured headlines around the globe.
Privacy advocates like the ACLU rallied around the bill as the way to rein in the spy agency and more
than 150 lawmakers signed on as cosponsors in the House.
In recent weeks, though, advocates worried that it was being progressively watered down.
First, leaders on the House Judiciary Committee made changes in order to gain support from a broader
cross-section of the chamber. Then, after it sailed through both the Judiciary and Intelligence
Committees, additional changes were made behind closed doors that caused many privacy groups
and tech companies such as Microsoft and Apple to drop their support.
When it passed the House 303-121 last week, fully half of the bills original cosponsors voted against
it.
We were of course very disappointed at the weakening of the bill, said Robyn Greene, policy counsel at
the New America Foundations Open Technology Institute. Right now we really are turning our attention
to the Senate to make sure that doesnt happen again.
Instead of entirely blocking the governments ability to collect bulk amounts of data, critics said
that the new bill could theoretically allow federal agents to gather information about an entire area
code or region of the country.
One factor working in the reformers favor is the strong support of Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick
Leahy (D-Vt.).
Unlike House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who only came to support the bill after
negotiations to produce a managers amendment, Leahy was the lead Senate sponsor of the USA Freedom
Act.

The fact that Leahy controls the committee gavel means he should be able to guide the bill through
when it comes up for discussion next month, advocates said.
The fact that he is the chairman and its his bill and this is an issue that he has been passionate
about for many years is comforting, Greene said.
I think this is something he really wants to see get done. He wants to see it get done right. And he wants
to see that Americans are confident that their privacy is being adequately protected, she added.
Moments after the House passed its bill, Leahy issued a statement praising the action but said he was
disappointed that some meaningful reforms were not included.
Other surveillance critics such as Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.)
and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) expressed similar dissatisfaction with the House effort.
Their sentiments should be buoyed by the swift outrage from civil liberties advocates on both sides of the
aisle, reformers hoped.
One reason the House bill moved so far away from its early principles, lawmakers and surveillance
critics have claimed, was pressure from House leadership and the Obama administration in the
days ahead of the vote.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is pledging to let Leahy and Intelligence
Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) take the lead on how to move forward.
I want Chairman Feinstein and Chairman Leahy to take a very close look at that and report to the Senate
as to what they think should be done, he told reporters on Thursday.
I believe we must do something and I have no problem with the House having acted, but I couldnt pass
a test on whats in their bill. But I guarantee Ill be able to after Feinstein and Leahy take a look at this,
said Reid.
Feinstein, who is also the No. 2 Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, could pose the biggest
obstacle for Leahys efforts.
She previously pushed for a much narrower reform bill, but said late Thursday that she was open
to considering the House-passed legislation.
House lawmakers, however, might not be too pleased if the two chambers end up with a significantly
different piece of legislation.
After passing its bill on Thursday, Goodlatte warned the Senate not to deviate too far from the
compromise that he and his colleagues had put together.
This has been very carefully negotiated here within the House but also with the administration,
he said. And its going to be very important that if the Senate does something different that it is... better
and not just different.
Because different can be worse rather than better, Goodlatte said.

2. Even if both bills are bad, a lack of reform collapses the program and a bill with
Senate modifications would gut NSA effectiveness
Sasso, National Journal, 14
[Brendan Sasso, 3/25/14, National Journal, Why Obama and His NSA Defenders Changed Their
Minds, http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/why-obama-and-his-nsa-defenders-changed-their-minds20140325, accessed 7/12/14, GNL]
It was only months ago that President Obama, with bipartisan backing from the heads of
Congress's Intelligence committees, was insisting that the National Security Agency's mass
surveillance program was key to keeping Americans safe from the next major terrorist attack. They
were also dismissing privacy concerns, saying the program was perfectly legal and insisting the necessary
safeguards were already in place.
But now, Obama's full-speed ahead has turned into a hasty retreat: The president and the NSA's
top supporters in Congress are all pushing proposals to end the NSA's bulk collection of phone
records. And civil-liberties groupsawash in their newly won cloutare declaring victory. The
question is no longer whether to change the program, but how dramatically to overhaul it.
So what changed?
It's not that Obama and his Hill allies suddenly saw the error of their ways and became born-again
privacy advocates. Instead, with a critical section of the Patriot Act set to expire next year, they
realized they had no choice but to negotiate.
If Congress fails to reauthorize that provisionSection 215by June 1, 2015, then the NSA's
collection of U.S. records would have to end entirely. And the growing outrage prompted by the
Snowden leaks means that the NSA's supporters would almost certainly lose an up-or-down vote on the
program.
Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that looming
sunset is what forced lawmakers to the bargaining table. "I think what has changed is the growing
realization that the votes are simply not there for reauthorization," he said in an interview. "I think
that more than anything else, that is galvanizing us into action."
Obama and the House Intelligence Committee leaders believe their proposals are now the NSA's
best bet to retain some power to mine U.S. phone records for possible terror plots. Senate
Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, another leading NSA defender, also indicated she
is on board with the changes, saying the president's proposal is a "worthy effort."
And though the Hill's NSA allies are now proposing reforms to the agency, they don't seem
particularly excited about it.
At a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday, Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the panel's top Democrat, often sounded like they
were arguing against their own bill that they were unveiling.

"I passionately believe this program has saved American lives," Rogers said. Ruppersberger said if the
program had been in place in 2001, it may have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.
But the lawmakers acknowledged there is broad "discomfort" with the program as it is currently
structured.
"We need to do something about bulk collection because of the perception of our constituents,"
Ruppersberger admitted.
Under their legislation, the vast database of phone records would stay in the hands of the phone
companies. The NSA could force the phone companies to turn over particular records, and the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would review the NSA orders after the fact.
But Rogers rejected a reporter's suggestion that the NSA should have never had control of the massive
database of phone records in the first place.
"There was no abuse, no illegality, no unconstitutionality," he said.
For all their hesitance, however, Rogers and company much prefer their version to a competing proposal
to change the way the government gathers information.
That would be the USA Freedom Act, a proposal from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman
Patrick Leahy and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner that Rogers and his ilk fear would go too far in
hamstringing the NSA. The USA Freedom Act would require the NSA to meet a tougher standard
for the data searches and would limit other NSA programs, such as Internet surveillance of people
overseas.
Additionally, President Obama is expected to unveil his own plan to reform the controversial phone
data collection program this week. According to The New York Times, Obama's proposal would also
keep the database in the hands of the phone companies. His plan would have tougher judicial
oversight than the House bill by requiring pre-approval from the court for every targeted phone number,
the newspaper reported.
But though the momentum has shifted and officials seem to be coalescing around a framework for
overhauling the NSA program, the question is far from settled.
Leahy and Sensenbrenner are not backing off from their USA Freedom Act, and outside groups will
continue their policy push as well.
In a statement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group, said the White House
proposal and the House bill would make "seemingly significant changes" to NSA spying. The group
said it prefers the White House plan because it would impose more judicial review on the process.
Michelle Richardson, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said she is "optimistic" about the
White House plan but maintained that the House bill is on the "wrong track."
She said it would actually be a step back from the status quo, because Obama already implemented
reforms in January that require judicial approval before each search of the database.

"The bill's modest improvements to the phone-records program are not worth demolishing the
important judicial role in overseeing these programs," she said. "The best bill we've seen so far to
fix the NSA is the bipartisan USA Freedom Act."
And while Leahy and Sensenbrenner push, the Intelligence Committee leaders are digging in as well,
saying the USA Freedom Act would jeopardize national security.
"In my opinion," Ruppersberger said, "the Sensenbrenner bill makes our country less safe."
D. Impact Terrorism
1. Effective NSA surveillance key to prevent terrorist attacks
Yoo, former US Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel Deputy assistant 13
[John Yoo, 8/16/13, National Review, Ending NSA Surveillance Is Not the Answer,
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/356027/ending-nsa-surveillance-not-answer-john-yoo, accessed
7/12/14, GNL]
We should be careful not to put the NSA in an impossible position. Of course, we should be vigilant
against the administrative state in all of its tangled tendrils, especially its collection of taxes (the IRS
scandal) and enforcement of the laws (Obamas refusal to enforce Obamacare and immigration law). The
problem here, however, is that we are placing these kinds of domestic law-enforcement standards
on a foreign intelligence function. With domestic law enforcement, we want the Justice Department to
monitor one identified target (identified because other evidence gives probable cause that he or she has
already committed a crime) and to carefully minimize any surveillance so as not to intrude on privacy
interests.
Once we impose those standards on the military and intelligence agencies, however, we are either
guaranteeing failure or we must accept a certain level of error. If the military and intelligence
agencies had to follow law-enforcement standards, their mission would fail because they would not
give us any improvement over what the FBI could achieve anyway. If the intelligence community is
to detect future terrorist attacks through analyzing electronic communications, we are asking them
to search through a vast sea of e-mails and phone-call patterns to find those few which, on the
surface, look innocent but are actually covert terrorist messages. If we give them broader authority,
we would have to accept a level of error that is inherent in any human activity. No intelligence agency
could perform its mission of protecting the nations security without making a few of these kinds of
mistakes. The question is whether there are too many, not whether there will be any at all.
Domestic law enforcement makes these errors too. Police seek warrants for the wrong guy, execute a
search in the wrong house, arrest the wrong suspect, and even shoot unarmed suspects. We accept these
mistakes because we understand that no law-enforcement system can successfully protect our
communities from crime with perfection. The question is the error rate, how much it would cost to reduce
it, the impact on the effectiveness of the program, and the remedies we have for mistakes. Consider those
questions in the context of the NSA surveillance program. The more important question is not the top
of the fraction but the bottom not just how many mistakes occurred, but how many records were
searched overall. If there were 2,000 or so mistakes, as the Washington Post suggests, but involving

billions of communications, the error rate is well less than 1 percent. Without looking at the latest
figures, I suspect that is a far lower error rate than those turned in by domestic police on searches and
arrests.
To end the NSAs efforts to intercept terrorist communications would be to willfully blind ourselves
to the most valuable intelligence sources on al-Qaeda (now that the president wont allow the capture
and interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders). The more useful question is whether there is a cost-effective way
to reduce the error rate without detracting from the effectiveness of the program, which, by General Keith
Alexanders accounting, has been high. Increasing judicial oversight might reduce errors though I am
dubious but in a way that would seriously slow down the speed of the program, which is all-important
if the mission is to stop terrorists. And perhaps Congress should think about ways to remedy any privacy
violations in the future. But to end the program because it does not have an error rate of zero is to
impose a demand on the NSA that no other government program, foreign or domestic, military or
civilian, could survive.
2. Terrorist retaliation causes nuclear war draws in Russia and China

Ayson, Victoria University strategic studies professor, 10
(Robert, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand at
the Victoria University of Wellington, July, After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic
Effects, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via InformaWorld)
A terrorist nuclear attack, and even the use of nuclear weapons in response by the country attacked in
the first place, would not necessarily represent the worst of the nuclear worlds imaginable. Indeed, there
are reasons to wonder whether nuclear terrorism should ever be regarded as belonging in the category of
truly existential threats. A contrast can be drawn here with the global catastrophe that would come from a
massive nuclear exchange between two or more of the sovereign states that possess these weapons in
significant numbers. Even the worst terrorism that the twenty-first century might bring would fade into
insignificance alongside considerations of what a general nuclear war would have wrought in the Cold
War period. And it must be admitted that as long as the major nuclear weapons states have hundreds
and even thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal, there is always the possibility of a truly
awful nuclear exchange taking place precipitated entirely by state possessors themselves. But these two
nuclear worldsa non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchangeare not
necessarily separable. It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack, and especially an act of nuclear
terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons
between two or more of the states that possess them. In this context, todays and tomorrows terrorist
groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state possessors of small
nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the superpowers
started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew
about nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem. t may require a considerable amount of
imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such
a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United
States, it might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the

picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or
encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in supporting that
sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however
remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how might the United States react if it was thought or
discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from Russian stocks,40
and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of
that nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation
by Michael May et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion would be spread over a
wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and collectable, and a wealth
of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and,
most important some indication of where the nuclear material came from.41 Alternatively, if the act
of nuclear terrorism came as a complete surprise, and American officials refused to believe that a
terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at all) suspicion would shift immediately to state
possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and France, and probably Israel
and India as well, authorities in Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North
Korea, perhaps Iran if its program continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage would Russia
and China be definitely ruled out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular, if the act of
nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of existing tension in Washingtons relations with Russia
and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded between these major powers, would
officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst? Of course, the chances of this occurring
would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of limited armed
conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war,
as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well apply too:
should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of heightened tension or
even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might rise
domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack?
Washingtons early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil might also raise the possibility
of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise
and confusion during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president
might be expected to place the countrys armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of
alert. In such a tense environment, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just
possible that Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force
(and possibly nuclear force) against them. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might
grow, although it must be admitted that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating
response.

NSA Reform Uniqueness

NSA Reform Will Pass Momentum

NSA reform has momentum now
Wilhelm, TechCrunch, 6/20/14
[Alex Wilhelm, 6/20/14, TechCrunch, NSA Reform Gathers Momentum In Congress After Late-Night
Vote, http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/20/nsa-reform-gathers-momentum-in-congress-after-late-nightvote/, accessed 7/12/14, GNL]
After a somewhat desultory year of little to no change, reform of the United States surveillance state
appears to have finally found momentum.
Recently the USA FREEDOM Act was gutted and rammed through the House, and two funding
amendments that would have cut monies for forced backdoors and certain government searches
failed.
Last night, however, the House passed a single amendment to the military funding bill that did what
the two failed amendments had attempted. At once, a large House majority had taken an
unambiguous stand against certain parts of the governments surveillance activities.
Its up to the Senate to act now, but at a minimum, those looking to reform the National Security Agency
(NSA) arent losing every skirmish.
Where do we go from here? Co-sponsors of the House amendment that passed are pledging more action.
In a collection of statements provided to TechCrunch, Rep. Zoe Lofgren said that the amendment is a
worthwhile step forward and will make a meaningful difference, but our work is not done. Rep. Jim
Sensenbrenner had a similar comment, saying that the passage of the amendment, and the USA
FREEDOM Act are positive, but not final, steps in our efforts to reform the administrations
surveillance authorities and protect Americans civil liberties.
In the upper chamber, the current pace of change isnt enough for some.
The Hill reported on a letter, published today, from Sens. Mark Udall, Ron Wyden, and Martin Heinrich
called on the President to end the collection of the phone records of American citizens. In their view, the
President has the authority to do so, without the need for congress to pass new legislation.
As you certainly recall, two of those three Senators were part of a separate troika that published an op-ed
in the LA Times excoriating the USA FREEDOM Acts passage in the house, saying that nearly all of the
essential reforms either watered down or removed.
Momentum in the House, and stridently vocal calls in the Senate for stronger reform? Knock on
wood.
NSA reform has momentum in the House now Obama and Senate support key
Timm, Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director, 6/20/14

[Trevor, 6/20/14, The Guardian, Congress wants NSA reform after all. Obama and the Senate need to
pass it, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/20/congress-obama-nsa-reform-obamasenate, accessed 7/12/14, GNL]
If you got angry last month when the National Security Agency, the White House and Eric Cantor's spyfriendly House of Representatives took a once-promising surveillance reform bill and turned it into a shit
sandwich, I've got some good news for you: so, apparently, did many members of Congress.
Late Thursday night, in a surprising rebuke to the NSA's lawyers and the White House after they
co-opted and secretly re-wrote the USA Freedom Act and got it passed an overwhelming majority of
the House of Representatives voted to strip the agency of its powers to search Americans' emails without
a warrant, to prohibit the NSA or CIA from pressuring tech companies to install so-called "back doors" in
their commercial hardware and software, and to bar NSA from sabotaging common encryption standards
set by the government.
What a difference the last year has made, you might say. Look what a little transparency can do!
But the House's support of these new fixes, by a count of 293 to 123 and a huge bipartisan majority
in the House, just put the pressure back on for the rest of the summer of 2014: the Senate can join
the House in passing these defense budget amendments, or more likely, will now be pressured to
plug in real privacy protections to America's new snooping legislation before it comes up for a vote.
This all puts the White House in an even more awkward position. Does President Obama threaten a veto
of the defense bill to stop this? (The White House could always, you know, ban the bulk collection of
your data right this second.)

Will Pass Strict Reform Unpopular

Will pass but it will be close Obama political capital is key to influencing loose
reform and gaining public support
Van Buren, former State Department foreign service officer, 3/28/14
[Peter Van Buren, Huffington Post, Dissecting Obama's Proposed NSA Reforms,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-van-buren/dissecting-obamas-propose_b_5048694.html, accessed
7/12/14, GNL]
The only category of people Obama has specifically exempted from surveillance is allied foreign
leaders. He has not extended any exemptions to American citizens.
The reform proposals seem specific only to bulk phone records collected by the NSA under Section
215 of the Patriot Act. They do not appear to apply to any other collections by the NSA (email, Skype,
chat, GPS, texts, and so on and on), or any other federal or state agency, or to any programs in place today
that we are not aware of or which may be created in the future, perhaps in response to the reforms.
This omission is significant; The Guardian reports the NSA collects each day more than five million
missed-call alerts, for use in contact-chaining analysis (working out someone's social network from
who they contact and when), details of 1.6 million border crossings a day, from network roaming
alerts, more than 110,000 names, from electronic business cards, which also included the ability to
extract and save images and over 800,000 financial transactions, either through text-to-text payments or
linking credit cards to phone users. NSA also extracted geolocation data from more than 76,000 text
messages a day, including from "requests by people for route info" and "setting up meetings."
Other travel information was obtained from itinerary texts sent by travel companies, even including
cancellations and delays to travel plans.
The Obama reforms do not even mention surveillance of Internet communications internationally
under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act; and surveillance of communications overseas under
Executive Order 12333.
The reforms do not mention pulling back the NSA's ongoing efforts to weaken overall internet
security, such a demanding companies provide them with backdoors to bypass encryption.
The reforms leave the door open. Obama's proposal includes a provision asking Congress to
validate that Section 215 of the Patriot Act may in the future be legitimately interpreted as allowing
bulk data collection of telephone data.
The reforms leave in place far too many secret court actions and loopholes.
The reforms will be changed in the Congressional process and are likely to be further weakened by
frightened representatives terrified of being blamed for the next act of terror (or by fear of losing
votes for appearing "weak.")

The reforms, even if enacted exactly as proposed or even slightly strengthened, only alter the security
state in some minor and superficial ways. Our Fourth Amendment rights against unwarranted search and
seizure remain jackbooted.

Top of the Docket

NSA reform on top of the docket now but Senate modifications may still happen
Hattem, The Hill, 7/5/14
[Julian, 7/5/14, The Hill, Crunch time for NSA reform, http://thehill.com/policy/technology/211309crunch-time-for-nsa-reform, accessed 7/12/14, GNL]
Its crunch time for reining in the National Security Agency.

If lawmakers are going to finalize the USA Freedom Act to reform government surveillance this
year, privacy advocates warn they need to pick up the pace this month.
I think theres a lot of pressure on the Judiciary Committee to act on USA Freedom before the
August recess, said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Everyone knows that bills that arent yet out of committee by the end of July are really hard to get
done because appropriations occupy so much time and attention, he added. I wouldnt want to be a
Judiciary Committee staffer responsible for this issue and have Fourth of July vacation plans.
The Senate will return after the holiday weekend for four straight weeks of work in Washington
before the month-long August recess. After that, government funding and the November elections are
likely to take center stage, clouding the outlook for any controversial measures on Capitol Hill.
The NSA reform bill passed the House in May, after sailing through both the Judiciary and
Intelligence Committees. In the Senate, however, there has been little action, more than a year after
the disclosures from Edward Snowden thrust the issue into the limelight.
Senators on the Intelligence Committee raised some concerns with the bill in a June hearing, but the
Judiciary Committee, which has primary authority, has yet to debate the bill or schedule a vote.
There will be pressure on Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who is also the lead sponsor
of the bill in the Senate. Leahy finds himself in a tighter spot than his House colleagues.
Eleventh-hour changes to the House bill caused many advocates to fear that it had been watered
down to the point of being toothless. Privacy groups and technology companies dropped their
support and have threatened to openly oppose the legislation unless substantial improvements
are made in the Senate version.
That set up a standoff with reformers such as Leahy, fellow Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Mark
Udall (D-Colo.) and others pushing for a tougher version of the bill pitted against opponents such as
Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), ranking member Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)
and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who worry that the compromises go too far.
The USA Freedom Act would end the NSAs bulk collection of information about Americans phone
calls and allow agents to search private companies records only after obtaining a court order.

Critics of the compromise bill, however, fear that overly broad selection terms would allow officials to
include large swaths of the population in their searches, such as everyone in a certain ZIP code or every
Verizon subscriber.
Defenders of the intelligence community say the searches help connect the dots between possible
terrorists and were critical in stopping a 2009 plot to bomb the New York City subway.
Senators must also resolve a lingering debate over allowing the NSA to conduct so-called
backdoor searches.
The bill originally included an additional measure preventing the NSA from conducting searches of
Americans' text messages, emails and other communications through a section of the law only meant to
target foreigners.
That provision was removed before the bill hit the floor in May, but the House overwhelmingly
approved a similar measure as an amendment to the 2015 defense appropriations bill in June. That
was seen as a boost for reformers.
A report last week from the federal governments privacy watchdog over the foreign surveillance
program, however, could blunt momentum for NSA reform.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Boards analysis concluded that the NSA surveillance
program in question appropriately focuses on foreigners and did not recommend a legislative
overhaul.
It was disappointing that given the breadth of the program and given all the civil liberties implications of
the program... that the report doesnt acknowledge those things, said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative
counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. Hopefully that doesnt stop the forward momentum
because Congress has appeared to go forward without it.
Reformist lawmakers and advocates said that the 293-123 June House vote should speak more
clearly than the government report and are urging quick action on the Senate version.
The government needs to do more to limit the incidental collection of this content [Americans
communications] and should not be allowed to query the data without a court order, Rep. James
Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the House sponsor of the USA Freedom Act and original Patriot Act author, said
in a statement.
I believe the Fourth Amendment means what it says and there should be no shortcuts around it, he
added.
A Judiciary Committee spokesperson was unavailable to comment on the panels plans for July.
Whether or not the Senate tackles the backdoor searches with the current bill, the issue is likely
to come up again in the future and could lead to further delays in the upper chamber.
The NSAs phone records program needs congressional reauthorization by next summer. The tracking of
foreigners communications, however, wont need renewal until 2017.
At some point its going to need to be addressed, Nojeim said.
I think its one of those issues that can hold up a reauthorization unless its favorably addressed.

NSA reform is top of the docket and has executive support

Garrett, CBS News chief Whitehouse correspondent, 5/14/14
[Major, 5/14/14, CBS News, With 2016 on the horizon, will anything get done in 2014 and 2015?,
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/with-2016-on-the-horizon-will-anything-get-done-in-2014-and-2015/,
Now that the pre-fight pugilism of 2016 has begun (Hillary versus Rove--talk about heavy-armed
brawlers), let's consider what President Obama and Congress may produce in 2014 and 2015.
The short answer is: not much, and perhaps quite a lot.
The underlying politics in both years is generally straightforward, but it will be a richer, spicier stew in
early 2015 if Republicans win back control of the Senate. More on that in a moment.
For the remainder of this year, Obama's "Year of Action" will yield precisely what it has already-incremental policy changes torturously wrapped in ever-more-garish spin garb. The act will wear thin;
Obama's narrative, such as it is, will flatten; and Republican anticipation for midterm gains--already
running ahead of the polls--will conspire against any high-profile (therefore risky) compromise with
the White House. That means the following for this year:
There is no impetus among rank-and-file House members to put together the component parts of a big
bill. The summer may see small-bore measures on border enforcement. There could also be a move to
encourage military service for illegal immigrants. But even the so-called Enlist Act creates political
headaches for the GOP. Obama will continue to push immigration, and House GOP leaders will delay the
eulogy as long as possible, but the issue doesn't just look dead for the year. It is dead.
No minimum-wage increase or temporary extension of emergency-unemployment benefits. Neither issue
moves the polling needle in House GOP districts--not even in swing districts. The price of extended
jobless benefits is approving the Keystone XL pipeline, a deal Obama won't touch. And there's no dollar
amount House GOP leaders will embrace for a higher minimum wage.
The FISA bill has a chance in the House. Floor action is expected soon, and with bipartisan support
in theJudiciary and Intelligence committees, the bill will likely reach the Senate with rare
momentum. Also, the White House has worked steadily and cooperatively with House GOP leaders
on the bill. Increasingly, Obama's new head of legislative affairs, Katie Beirne Fallon, is seen by top
House and Senate GOP leaders as the go-to person on legislative compromise. Fallon is accessible, open
to input, and viewed as a fair referee of policy debates. Fallon and top GOP aides collaborated on some
fine-tuning of the FISA reform bill as it moved through the Judiciary Committee before recess.

Will Pass Obama Negotiations

Obama using political capital to negotiate with Leahy key to senate passage
Mascaro, LA Times, 5/21/14
[Lisa, 5/21/14, LA Times, White House's late changes to NSA spying bill shake support,
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-nsa-reforms-legislation-20140522-story.html, accessed
7/13/14, GNL]
Carefully crafted legislation that would end the government's bulk collection of Americans' phone
records is under fire after the White House requested last-minute changes that critics say would
water down its protections.
A year after Americans learned from National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the NSA
was secretly collecting vast amounts of telephone and email data, the House is preparing to vote this week
on legislation intended to curtail domestic spying.
Although the bill is likely to pass Thursday, the changes hammered out in secretive negotiations
over the last few days between the Obama administration and leaders on Capitol Hill have led some
privacy groups and civil libertarians to withdraw their support. They warn that the revisions,
including changes to what sort of government data searches would be permitted, could provide loopholes
that would allow massive data collection to continue.
"I think it's ironic that a bill that was intended to increase transparency was secretly changed," said Rep.
Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which crafted the original
legislation. "And it was altered in worrisome ways." She said she was unsure how she would vote.
So far, the changes appear modest enough to avoid tanking the bipartisan support needed for
passage. But meddling with the accord poses inherent risks in a divided Congress where lawmakers have
grown increasingly wary of intelligence operations. An unusual political alliance of liberal Democrats
and small-government conservatives has thwarted earlier efforts to expand spy agencies' reach into
Americans' private lives.
Many of those lawmakers remained undecided Wednesday, suggesting the final vote could be closer than
the White House would like.
The White House insisted Wednesday that the changes were intended to meet the shared goal of the
president and Congress to clip the vast collection of bulk "metadata," while ensuring against new
directives that would impede routine investigations or efforts to combat terrorism.
Administration officials argued in the closed discussions, often held in the third-floor Capitol suite of
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), that the bill's language originally approved by the judiciary
and intelligence committees was drafted too narrowly and could limit non-bulk data collection operations.
Under the proposed legislation, the Justice Department and intelligence agencies would no longer be
allowed to collect from telephone companies vast amounts of so-called metadata, including the times and

lengths of calls but not the contents of conversations. Instead they would need to narrow searches by
making "specific selection" requests based on certain criteria.
The bill would also require the government to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order for
any such requests with an exception for emergencies that would allow data collection up to seven days
before approval must be sought.
But at the request of the White House, the definition of "specific selection" was changed. Initially, a
search would have been required to uniquely describe a "person, entity or account."
"There was no effort to soften the ban on bulk collection," said National Security Council spokeswoman
Caitlin Hayden. "Our engagement was to ensure that the language of the USA Freedom Act would not
have any unintended consequences for routine individual investigations."
The White House complained that the definition was too narrow and would impede even routine
investigations. The new language more broadly defines "specific selection" as a "discrete term, such as a
term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address or device."
Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the addition of the words
"such as" make the new language "too expansive" and would allow "for much broader orders than privacy
advocates are envisioning."
The American Civil Liberties Union said the new bill "leaves much to be desired."
In the Democratic-controlled Senate, which is considering its own version of the bill, similar bipartisan
objections have been raised.
The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, said he was
concerned about the new version, and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, said he would seek to restore certain provisions.
Those familiar with the negotiations said the lawmakers won key concessions from the administration in
return for the changes including the appointment of advocates who can review FISA court decisions.
The government would also be required to "promptly" destroy any material collected that was deemed
irrelevant to an investigation rather than be allowed to retain it indefinitely.
The bill also contains liability protections for companies that furnish information to the government, and
says those firms can be compensated for their services.
Obama political capital is creating bipartisan opposition to the senate bill

Nicks, Time, 5/22/14
[Denver, 5/22/14, Time, Bill Curbing NSA Passes House As Advocates Demand More,
http://time.com/109444/nsa-leaks-snowden-usa-freedom-act/, accessed 7/13/14, GNL]
Privacy groups unhappy with late changes pulled their support from the bill at the last minute

The vote came a year after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden set off a global debate about
American surveillance practices by leaking a trove of documents detailing them. Privacy groups
pulled their support for the bill before it came to a vote, but it still passed 303-120.
The House is the beginning of the conversation, said Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst with the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. The House wanted to pass something quickly and as a result really
watered it down. Now were at the Senate where well have to present a stronger bill and where hopefully
a stronger bill will move.
In the days before the USA FREEDOM Act passed the House, support for the bill among the civil
liberties groups and tech companies that once championed it all but vanished. Groups that had been
lobbying hard on behalf of the bill for months, like EFF, The Center for Democracy and Technology, and
the Reform Government Surveillance Coalition, a consortium on tech giants including Facebook and
Google, all yanked their endorsements at the 11th hour. Reform advocates were steamed about tweaks
made in committee that they felt unacceptably broadened the scope of who and what the NSA can
monitor, and also by the elimination of a measure that would have created a privacy advocate on
the secretive court that oversees the NSA.
What happened was the bill changed at the last minute, said Harley Geiger, senior counsel with the
Center for Democracy and Technology. It changed at the last stop before going to the house floor.
Lawmakers who supported the measure took turns Thursday emphasizing that it would end the bulk
collection of Americans communications. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chairs the House
committee that deals with intelligence matters, called it a sweet spot compromise with strong
bipartisan support. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) said the bill had its shortcomings but was a step in
the right direction.
Let me be clear, I wish this bill did more, he said. To my colleagues who lament changes, I agree with
you. To privacy groups who are upset about lost provisions, I share your disappointment. The negotiations
for this bill were intense, and we had to make compromises, but this bill still deserves support.
But advocates said the changes left too much open to interpretation and that courts could eventually gut
many of the reforms.
What theyre not doing is defining bulk collection, Geiger said.
Amendments to the bill were not allowed as it went from the Rules Committee to a floor vote Thursday.
All the House of Representatives got was an up or down vote on ambiguous reform on an issue that
cause a bona fide international scandal, Geiger said.
The bill will now go to the Senate, where it will be shepherded by one of its original proponents,
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).
Todays action in the House continues the bipartisan effort to restore Americans civil liberties, Leahy
said in a statement after the bill passed. But I was disappointed that the legislation passed today does not
include some of the meaningful reforms contained in the original USA FREEDOM Act. I will continue to
push for these important reforms when the Senate Judiciary Committee considers the USA FREEDOM
Act next month.

Whether or not Leahy and his allies will be successful in reinserting some of the reforms that
originally won civil libertarian support for the USA FREEDOM Act remains to be seen. The Senate
has a stronger cohort of establishment Republicans than the House and fewer Tea Party conservatives
whose small-government ethos clashes with the notion of expansive domestic surveillance. On the other
hand, the measure will have a powerful ally in Leahy.
At the end, Geiger said, it will come down to whether the senate wants to end mass surveillance or
not.
Obama is negotiating with Senate for a House version of the bill

Barfield, AEI resident scholar, 6/24/14
[Claude Barfield, Tech Policy Daily, NSA reform: House votes upend previous decisions,
http://www.techpolicydaily.com/technology/nsa-reform-new-house-votes-upend-previous-decisions/,
accessed 7-13-14, GNL]
Late last Thursday night, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (293-123) to ban the
National Security Agency from searching troves of foreign communications for information on
Americans without a warrant from a federal court. Specifically, it banned using funds to perform
searches using an identifier of a United States person within foreign information legally collected by
the NSA under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without first obtaining a warrant. Further, the
amendment, introduced by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and James
Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), would also forbid the security agency from requiring private companies to
build malware or backdoor vulnerabilities into their products and services. (A second, less heralded
amendment, passed by voice vote, would ban the NSA from working with the Commerce Department to
weaken or create faulty encryption standards). Both amendments were to the 2015 Defense
Appropriations Act, considered must-pass legislation in this session.
Supporters of the amendments, including a number of outside NGOs, privacy advocates, and many
high tech companies, hailed the passage as a game changer in the fight to reform NSA practices and
legal responsibilities. The votes directly counter another measure, the USA Freedom Act, which passed
the House in March by 303 to 112 votes. Under compromises put together between the House Judiciary
and Intelligence committees at that time, no prohibitions on NSA activities were prescribed in the USA
Freedom Act, unlike in the amendments just passed in the DOD appropriations bill.
In the Senate, a similar conflict is being played out between NSA defenders and critics. It is thought
that a bill being crafted by a bipartisan group of Members in the Senate Intelligence Committee,
headed by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), will likely track the House
USA Freedom Act; but the Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) is just as
likely to back NSA critics and ban bulk collection and the NSAs authority to force companies to
introduce backdoor traps in Internet infrastructure equipment. Attempting to exploit the new House vote,
three of the NSAs most vocal critics in the SenateSens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)., Mark Udall (D-Colo.),
and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) wrote to the president on Friday, urging him to act unilaterally to curb the
agencys authorities.

Despite this increasing opposition, the Obama administration strongly supports the original House
USA Freedom Act. The president reviewed alternative options for the NSA practices this winter, and
came to the conclusion that US national security would be weakened if NSAs bulk surveillance powers
were restricted. Significantly, the administration never commented publicly on NSA alleged backdoor
activities.
The bottom line is this: Last weeks House votes greatly strengthened the hands of those pushing for
a substantial cutback in NSA surveillance powers. But a mere amendment to an appropriations bill is a
long way from enactment into law particularly when faced with determined legislative allies of the NSA
and with the potentially strong opposition by the president. As a general rule, security considerations
often trump privacy fears in Congress, so despite the House action last week, it is likely that NSA
supporters will ultimately win. On the other hand, given the fraught legislative process these days,
deadlock cannot be entirely ruled out.

Link

Link Magnifier
Plans unpopularity influences Obama to go for stricter NSA reform to gain political
capital
Brown, Independent Voter Network, 3/31/14
[Logan, 3/31/14, IVN, Obamas NSA Reforms Legitimize Snowdenhttp://ivn.us/2014/03/31/obamasnsa-reforms-legitimize-snowden/, accessed 7/12/14, GNL]
Edward Snowden famously noted that his greatest fear regarding his revelations is that nothing will
change.
But on March 24, almost a year after Snowdens first interview, President Obama spoke about
proposing legislation to Congress which would end the NSAs bulk collection of American phone
records. Although appearing progressive on its face, the politics at play behind Obamas NSA reforms
deserve further investigation.
First, Snowden has indefinitely shifted the political discourse regarding national security. Obama
now advocating to reform the NSA program which he vehemently defended over the past year
is an indication to the legitimacy behind Snowdens acts.
Norman Solomon, co-founder of the progressive advocacy group RootsAction.org, mentioned that the
credibility of the White House has gone through the floor, while the credibility of Snowden continues to
ascend.
A January poll by USA Today reflects this sentiment as it found that 70 percent of Americans
believe that they should not have to give up privacy and freedom for protection against terrorism.
This highlights an ideological shift toward Snowden since his original revelations in June 2013.
However, a politically conscious Obama administration recognizes the political capital it could gain
from endorsing these reforms. Plus, in the event that Congress blocks the legislation, Obama can
put the blame on them.
Guantanamo Bay is a prime example of Obama playing politics with a controversial U.S. national
security program. Obama constantly promised to terminate Guantanamo Bay, but his promises failed to
permeate. Congress continuously blocks legislation that would make closing Guantanamo faster and
easier which allows Obama to pass the blame onto them.
Its worth questioning the veracity of the proposed reforms because they only address phone metadata
they exempt other popular forms of communication like email, Skype, texts, and GPS. The reforms also
fail to mention sharing information among foreign governments and spy agencies, such as the Five Eyes.
Five Eyes is an alliance among spy agencies from the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada and
has been known to spy on citizens from each nation involved to circumvent domestic laws.
Without taking steps to reform the legality of governments gaining information on their citizens from
foreign governments, implementing domestic laws would do anything about ongoing security concerns.

Although there are numerous shortcomings, initiating reform is the primary step in fostering change, so
they are not entirely futile. However, future NSA reform must address the greater issues involving
transparency, Internet security, accountability, and national sovereignty for them to have any tangible
impact.

Internal Link

Political Capital Key

Obamas political capital is key to deterring overly aggressive reform
Wyler, Vice, 14
[Grace, 1-8-14, Vice, The Six Biggest Science and Tech Issues Facing Congress This Year,
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/blog/the-six-biggest-science-and-tech-issues-facing-congress-thisyear, accessed 7-13-14, AAZ]
Still, there are some questions that Washington will have to address in 2014. Here are the most
important science and tech issues on Congresss to-do list:
Debate over the NSA is just beginning.
NSA Reform: Obviously the big question for 2014 is how Congress will act to rein in the NSAs
controversial surveillance programs, including the bulk collection of virtually all American phone
records. The calls for aggressive reforms have gained momentum among a coalition of civil liberties
activists and tech executives over the past six months, and were recently galvanized by a federal court
ruling that declared the agencys metadata collection is likely unconstitutional. On Friday, U.S. Sen.
Rand Paul filed a class-action lawsuit against the Obama administration over the NSAs spying practices,
and other members of Congress have pledged to take action at the legislative level. So far, though, its not
clear how far that action will go.
A lot will depend on President Obamas response to the reforms suggested by a presidential review
panel in December. According to the Los Angeles Times, the President is planning his own package of
reforms, which will likely include putting a public lawyer on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
and shifting the NSAs bulk metadata storage to a private partner. Given that leaders of both chambers
have typically deferred to Obama on intelligence issues, this announcement will likely influence
how NSA reform legislation moves forward in Congress , where members are divided between a
stringent overhaul of the spy agencys metadata collection programs and more tepid reforms suggested by
the NSAs defenders.
Obama pushing middle ground reform now continued push key to Senate passage
Sink, The Hill, 14
[Justin, 1-17-14, The Hill, Obama calls for NSA overhaul,
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/195799-obama-wants-to-overhaul-nsa, accessed 7-13-14,
AAZ]
President Obama announced on Friday that he would place new restrictions on controversial
surveillance programs that have sparked controversy around the world since they were revealed by
Edward Snowdens leaks.

The president said he would now require intelligence agencies to obtain judicial approval before
reviewing databases of information about telephone calls.
He also said the government would end its collection and holding of phone records but not until after
the Justice Department and intelligence community, working with Congress, figure out a means for
moving forward.
Its unclear who would hold on to data collected by telecom companies.
Obama did not offer a specific proposal for how that information would be stored, including whether
it would all be held by one third party or by individual telephone companies, who have said they dont
want the responsibility.
I believe critics are right to point out that without proper safeguards, this type of program could
be used to yield more information about our private lives, and open the door to more intrusive, bulk
collection programs in the future, Obama told lawmakers and intelligence officials assembled for his
highly-anticipated speech at the Justice Department.
Obama also announced new restrictions on the surveillance of foreign leaders, as revelations about
the NSA monitoring the phones of global leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel have enraged
populations around the world.
But the president's speech and suggested reforms appeared designed primarily to assure Americans and
the world about the scope of U.S. intelligence programs, rather than representing a substantial policy
change.
Obama ultimately rejected many of the more aggressive reforms suggested by a review panel
commissioned to examine the nation's surveillance practices. The president did not dramatically
overhaul the mission of the National Security Agency or require judicial review of national security
letters requests for information unilaterally issued by agencies like the FBI.
Civil liberties advocates have complained that the letters are issued without a court order, and can include
an indefinite gag order preventing recipients from ever disclosing it received the letter. Obama said that
he would direct the Justice Department to amend the program to improve transparency, but stopped short
of further constraints.
Nor did Obama order changes to a controversial program that surveils foreign electronic communications.
Obama argued that effort was crucial to security and provided the U.S. and its allies information
they needed to thwart terror attacks.
What I did not do is stop these programs wholesale not only because I felt that they made us more
secure; but also because nothing in that initial review, and nothing that I have learned since, indicated that
our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of their
fellow citizens, Obama said.
Obama instead sought to explain the surveillance programs couched in a broader historical context,
channeling his time as a constitutional professor before his election to Washington.

Obama invoked the nation's history of surveillance, harkening back to Paul Revere during the
Revolutionary War. He argued that today's challenges were merely the latest and most technologically
challenging in centuries of debate.
We have to make some important decisions about how to protect ourselves and sustain our
leadership in the world, while upholding the civil liberties and privacy protections that our ideals and
our Constitution require, Obama said.
And the president insisted that there was no evidence that intelligence officials had systematically broken
the law or invaded the privacy of ordinary people.
They are not abusing authorities in order to listen to your private phone calls, or read your
emails, Obama said.
That many of the president's proposed reforms will require further study or congressional help only
further complicates the question of how substantive Obama's reform efforts will be.
Obama is asking Attorney General Eric Holder and members of the intelligence community to find a way
to preserve the capabilities of the program without the government holding the metadata. The White
House will also solicit input from Congress, and is expected to announce their solution within 60 days.
The report prepared by the review panel last month suggested that the records be maintained by telephone
companies or a third party. But companies have been resistant to that idea, fearful that it could sour their
relationships with customers and prove expensive.
Obama acknowledged any possible solutions pose difficult problems.
Relying solely on the records of multiple providers, for example, could require companies to alter their
procedures in ways that raise new privacy concerns, Obama said. On the other hand, any third party
maintaining a single, consolidated data-base would be carrying out what is essentially a government
function but with more expense, more legal ambiguity, potentially less accountability, all of which would
have a doubtful impact on public confidence that their privacy is being protected.
Several of the other reforms Obama called for will require action by Congress.
On all of these issues, I am open to working with Congress to ensure that we build a broad consensus for
how to move forward, and am confident that we can shape an approach that meets our security needs
while upholding the civil liberties of every American, Obama said.
For instance, the president will ask Congress to approve a panel of privacy and technology lawyers
who would represent outside interests before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the top secret
judicial panel that reviews the surveillance issues. The panel would represent privacy concerns as the
court considers new and novel legal questions, but is not expected to argue specific individuals' cases.
The president's other proposals largely focused on additional or ongoing disclosure of spy activity,
rather than efforts to limit the government's surveillance practices.
Obama announced that he would order his administration to disclose any new opinions of the secret
intelligence court with broad privacy implications. New White House aide John Podesta will also lead a
government review of bulk data collection, both within the government and the private sector.

Internet providers and technology companies will be given greater latitude to disclose general information
about the national security requests they receive.
White House officials said that the president's proposals came after lengthy consultation with
outside groups, including members of Congress , technology companies, and privacy advocates.
During his speech, Obama said he did not intend to dwell on Snowden, the former government contractor
who leaked information about the NSA programs to the world. Snowden is wanted on espionage charges
and is not living in Russia, which granted him temporary asylum.
Not guaranteed passage continued push is key to preventing over reform

Ackerman, The Guardian, Borger, The Guardian, 14
[Spencer, Julian, 3-25-14, Obama: US must 'win back the trust of ordinary citizens' over data collection,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/obama-us-nsa-data-collection-trust, accessed 7-13-14,
AAZ]
Obama said he believed the reform proposals presented to him by the US intelligence agencies were
workable, and would eliminate the concerns of privacy campaigners. I am confident that it
allows us to do what is necessary in order to deal the threat of a terrorist attack, but does so in a
way that addresses people's concerns, he said.
Activists gave a cautious welcome to Obama's plans . Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the
American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an article for the Guardian: The president is acknowledging
that a surveillance program endorsed by all three branches of government, and in place for more than a
decade, has not been able to survive public scrutiny. It's an acknowledgement that the intelligence
agencies, the surveillance court and the intelligence committees struck a balance behind closed doors that
could not be defended in public.
In a statement through the ACLU, Snowden said he had always believed that the NSA's "unconstitutional
mass surveillance of Americans" would not stand up to public, political or legal scrutiny, if the extent of it
became known. "This is a turning point, and it marks the beginning of a new effort to reclaim our rights
from the NSA and restore the public's seat at the table of government," he said.
The White House said Obama will now ask the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, which
gives legal oversight to the system, to approve the current bulk collection program for a final 90-day
period as the president attempts to implement his plan.
Attention will now be focused on how that can be achieved in Congress . In Washington on Tuesday,
leaders of the House intelligence committee outlined their proposals for NSA reform, which they say
would also end bulk phone record collection but which have been greeted with scepticism by civil
liberties campaigners.
The bill being pushed by the committees Republican chairman, Mike Rogers of Michigan, and its
ranking Democrat, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland both NSA allies would empower the
government to compel phone companies and internet service providers to turn over records with a

reasonable articulable suspicion of connection to terrorism or espionage, along with data of
individuals up to two hops or degrees of separation away.
Although a single order could involve sprawling into the data of thousands of individuals, Rogers and
Ruppersberger said their bill would represent ending bulk collection. Both men have been vocal
defenders of the phone records program but they now concede that it made their colleagues and
constituents uncomfortable. "We're beyond that," Rogers said. "Now our goal, and our number one goal,
always has been, not about about bulk collection, but: how do we catch these people trying to call in to
the United States? Can we do it in a way that prevents another 9/11?"
Ruppersberger, whose district includes the NSA's Fort Meade headquarters, added: "Mike and I knew we
had to deal with the perception and get the confidence of the American people."
Both leaders said they were close to alignment with the White House proposal , which they said
currently provides greater up-front judicial scrutiny on the data collection than their own effort. "We think
the White House is now moving toward our position on this. We've been sharing text with them for the
past few weeks," Rogers said.
Neither the White House nor the House intelligence committee proposal would require
telecommunications firms to keep such records any longer than the current 18-month maximum, a
significant shift away from the five years during which they are currently held by NSA. The moves
represent a significant overhaul of the secret mass collection practices of the past 13 years, as
exposed by Snowden.
Under the House intelligence committee bill, judges on the secret Fisa court would approve the NSA's
procedures for acquiring the data from the firms, but would only review the specific data collection after
the collection occurs. According to a draft of the bill, judges who considered the data collection improper
could order a purge of it.
The introduction of the bill sets up a legislative battle with a more far-reaching reform effort, authored
by GOP congressman Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Democratic senator Patrick Leahy of
Vermont. The Leahy-Sensenbrenner bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, permits the government to
acquire data related to an "ongoing" terrorism investigation the standard set out in the Patriot Act, which
since 2006 the NSA has contended its bulk collection of Americans' phone data meets.
Rogers and Ruppersberger forcefully rejected that proposal. "We believe the other bills out there don't
meet that standard of still being able to protect Americans through intelligence-gathering," Rogers
said.
On Monday night, Sensenbrenner was just as critical of the Rogers-Ruppersberger bill, describing it as
convoluted and insufficiently protective of Americans' privacy. It limits, but does not end, bulk
collection. Provisions included in the draft fall well short of the safeguards in the USA Freedom Act and
do not strike the proper balance between privacy and security, he said.
Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said on Tuesday that she would
hold a hearing on the White House and House intelligence committee proposals, a further indication that
the Leahy-Sensenbrenner initiative faces an uphill struggle to avoid being squeezed out.
I believe the presidents plan is a worthy effort. I have said before that I am open to reforming the call
records program as long as any changes meet our national security needs and address privacy concerns,

and that any changes continue to provide the government with the means to protect against future terrorist
attacks, Feinstein said.
In a statement, Leahy, who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, also welcomed Obama's plan to end
collection of US phone records. "That is a key element of what I and others have outlined in the USA
Freedom Act, and that is what the American people have been demanding," he said.
I look forward to having meaningful consultation with the administration on these matters, and
reviewing its proposal to evaluate whether it sufficiently protects Americans privacy. In the meantime,
the president could end bulk collection once and for all on Friday by not seeking reauthorisation of this
program. Rather than postponing action any longer, I hope he chooses this path.
A spokeswoman for one of the major telephone companies, Sprint, said: "We are reviewing the Obama
administrations proposal with great interest and look forward to seeing additional details of the
administrations proposal."
Senator Mark Udall, the Colorado Democrat who has been a prominent critic of bulk surveillance,
said he was encouraged by the president's plans. "The constitution is clear the ongoing bulk
collections of Americans' call records is an unacceptable invasion of our privacy that doesn't make us
safer and must be brought to an end," he said.
Another Democratic critic, Ron Wyden of Oregon, said Obama's shift against bulk collection was a
victory. "This is the start of the end of dragnet surveillance in America," said Wyden, who added that he
spoke to the White House on Monday night.
Obama is pushing to maintain some metadata program but strong opposition

exists
Madhani, USA today, Jackson, USA Today, 14
[Aamer, David, 1-17-14, Obama seeks middle ground with NSA overhaul,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/01/17/obama-nsa-speech-reform/4588327/, accessed
7-13-14, AAZ]
In announcing his long-awaited plans to overhaul government surveillance policies, President Obama
on Friday sought to occupy a middle space in the simmering debate on U.S. spying.
He pushed for a greater measure of transparency and oversight in how the intelligence community
goes about its work, but rejected calls to end the National Security Agency's controversial telephone
metadata program altogether.
"When you cut through the noise, what's really at stake is how we remain true to who we are in a world
that is remaking itself at dizzying speed," Obama said in his address, which comes more than seven
months after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations triggered a national conversation
about U.S. snooping.
Obama offered a forceful defense of the intelligence community. But he also acknowledged privacy
advocates' and civil libertarians' concerns about the breadth of the nation's intelligence apparatus, which

has grown by quantum leaps with technological advances that he said make it harder than ever "to both
defend our nation and uphold our civil liberties."
The most significant policy change Obama announced was ending the NSA's ability to store phone data
from millions of Americans. He asked the Justice Department and the intelligence community to come up
with a plan within 60 days of who should hold these records.
But the president declined calls from some in Congress and civil libertarians to end the telephone
data program outright.
He argued that the program which his own intelligence review panel concluded has not helped foil a
terrorist act was an essential tool in keeping the homeland safe and must be maintained.
The president said, however, that the agency which has accessed the massive phone database at its own
discretion in the past would immediately be required to seek approval from the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISC) before reviewing telephone records, except in emergency situations.
Obama also called for the establishment of a panel of independent advocates to represent privacy
and civil liberty interests in "significant" cases before the secret surveillance court, The intelligence
review panel suggested that an advocate appear in every case. Creating a public advocate panel will
require congressional action and Obama's.
He vowed that the United States won't listen in on phone calls of allies a practice that drew the ire of
Brazil's Dilma Rousseff and Germany's Angela Merkel unless there is a "compelling national security
purpose."
Some NSA critics on Capitol Hill said the president's plans don't go far enough and are riddled
with loopholes that intelligence and law enforcement agencies can exploit.
"I am unwilling to sacrifice the privacy rights and civil liberties of Americans for the excessive
collection of personal data," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., predicting that the Supreme Court will ultimately decide the NSA's authority,
likened Obama's speech to his health care promises. Paul told CNN: "I think what I heard is that if you
like your privacy you can keep it."
Even some supporters of the president said that for nearly every policy fix Obama offered, there are
new questions about how he will be able to implement the changes:
Will Congress approve the creation of a panel of independent advocates on the FISC?
Will liberals and libertarian lawmakers spurn Obama's defense of the metadata program and press ahead
with measures floating in both chambers of Congress that would end the program?
And how will the president deal with the inevitable battle he will face from hawkish members of
Congress, the technology industry and privacy advocates who will have disparate interests in the
conversation about placing the metadata in the hands of a third party?

Political Capital Key to Goldilocks

NSA reform bill not guaranteed to pass Obama political capital key to goldilocks
amount of reform
Hawkings, former CQ Weekly managing editor, 3/25/14
[David, 3/25/14, Hawkings Here, http://blogs.rollcall.com/hawkings/obama-nsa-reform-plan-could-easecongressional-deadlock-on-spying/2/, accessed 7/13/14, GNL]
Eight months ago, in one of its most important and fascinatingly nonpartisan votes of recent
memory, the House came up just seven members short of eviscerating the governments vast effort
to keep tabs on American phone habits.
The roll call revealed a profound divide in Congress on how assertively the intelligence community
should be allowed to probe into the personal lives of private citizens in the cause of thwarting
terrorism. It is a split that has stymied legislative efforts to revamp the National Security Agencys bulk
data collection programs.
Until now, maybe. Senior members with jurisdiction over the surveillance efforts, in both parties
and on both sides of the Hill, are signaling generalized and tentative but nonetheless clear support
for the central elements of a proposed compromise that President Barack Obama previewed
Tuesday and will formally unveil by weeks end.
The president, in other words, may be close to finding the congressional sweet spot on one of the
most vexing problems hes faced an issue that surged onto Washingtons agenda after the secret
phone records collection efforts were disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
If Obama can seal the deal, which hes pledged to push for by the end of June, it would almost
surely rank among his most important second-term victories at the Capitol. It also would create an
exception that proves the rule about the improbability of bipartisan agreement on hot-button issues
in an election season.
I recognize that people were concerned about what might happen in the future with that bulk data,
Obama said at a news conference in The Hague, where hes been working to gain support for containing
Russia from a group of European leaders who have their own complaints about U.S. spying on telephone
calls. This proposal thats been presented to me would eliminate that concern.
The top two members of the House Intelligence Committee, GOP Chairman Mike Rogers of Michigan
and ranking Democrat C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, introduced their own bill to revamp
surveillance policy Tuesday and declared they expect it would track very closely with the language
coming from the administration. They said they had been negotiating with White House officials for
several weeks and viewed the two proposals as compatible.
At their core, both the Obama and House bills would end the NSA practice of sucking up and
storing for five years the date and time, duration and destination of many millions of phone calls
placed or received by Americans. Instead, the phone companies would be required to retain this so-

called metadata (and comparable information about email and Internet use) for 18 months, their current
practice. And the government would have to obtain something like a search warrant from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, meaning in each discreet case a judge would limit how deeply the
telecom companies would have to query their databases in hopes of finding calling patterns that suggest
national security threats.
Since both Rogers and Ruppersberger have been prominent defenders of the bulk collection system, any
agreement they reach that has Obamas blessing can be expected to pass the House.
It should garner support from a lopsided majority of the 217 House members (three-fifths of the
Republicans and two-fifths of the Democrats) who voted to stick with the status quo last July. And it
stands a chance to win over at least some on the other side an unusual coalition of 94 mostly
libertarian-leaning tea party Republicans and 111 liberal Democrats, who say NSA searches of the
databases should be limited to information about existing targets of investigations.
But one leader of that camp vowed to work for the defeat of any measure that looks like either the Obama
or Intelligence panel plans. Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who as chairman of House
Judiciary a decade ago was instrumental in writing the Patriot Act, believes that law has been grossly
misapplied by the NSA to invade personal privacy much too easily.
Sensenbrenner said he would continue to push his measure to almost entirely prevent the NSA from
looking at telecommunications metadata. But the sponsor of the companion Senate bill, Judiciary
Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said he would remain open to finding the makings of a deal in the
Obama plan. Leahy signaled the legislative negotiating would be much smoother if Obama suspended the
bulk data collection during the talks.

Impacts

NSA Key to Solve Terrorism

NSA surveillance key to prevent terrorist attacks
Yoo, former US Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel Deputy assistant 13
[John Yoo, 8/16/13, National Review, Ending NSA Surveillance Is Not the Answer,
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/356027/ending-nsa-surveillance-not-answer-john-yoo, accessed
7/12/14, GNL]
We should be careful not to put the NSA in an impossible position. Of course, we should be vigilant
against the administrative state in all of its tangled tendrils, especially its collection of taxes (the IRS
scandal) and enforcement of the laws (Obamas refusal to enforce Obamacare and immigration law). The
problem here, however, is that we are placing these kinds of domestic law-enforcement standards
on a foreign intelligence function. With domestic law enforcement, we want the Justice Department to
monitor one identified target (identified because other evidence gives probable cause that he or she has
already committed a crime) and to carefully minimize any surveillance so as not to intrude on privacy
interests.
Once we impose those standards on the military and intelligence agencies, however, we are either
guaranteeing failure or we must accept a certain level of error. If the military and intelligence
agencies had to follow law-enforcement standards, their mission would fail because they would not
give us any improvement over what the FBI could achieve anyway. If the intelligence community is
to detect future terrorist attacks through analyzing electronic communications, we are asking them
to search through a vast sea of e-mails and phone-call patterns to find those few which, on the
surface, look innocent but are actually covert terrorist messages. If we give them broader authority,
we would have to accept a level of error that is inherent in any human activity. No intelligence agency
could perform its mission of protecting the nations security without making a few of these kinds of
mistakes. The question is whether there are too many, not whether there will be any at all.
Domestic law enforcement makes these errors too. Police seek warrants for the wrong guy, execute a
search in the wrong house, arrest the wrong suspect, and even shoot unarmed suspects. We accept these
mistakes because we understand that no law-enforcement system can successfully protect our
communities from crime with perfection. The question is the error rate, how much it would cost to reduce
it, the impact on the effectiveness of the program, and the remedies we have for mistakes. Consider those
questions in the context of the NSA surveillance program. The more important question is not the top
of the fraction but the bottom not just how many mistakes occurred, but how many records were
searched overall. If there were 2,000 or so mistakes, as the Washington Post suggests, but involving
billions of communications, the error rate is well less than 1 percent. Without looking at the latest
figures, I suspect that is a far lower error rate than those turned in by domestic police on searches and
arrests.
To end the NSAs efforts to intercept terrorist communications would be to willfully blind ourselves
to the most valuable intelligence sources on al-Qaeda (now that the president wont allow the capture
and interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders). The more useful question is whether there is a cost-effective way
to reduce the error rate without detracting from the effectiveness of the program, which, by General Keith

Alexanders accounting, has been high. Increasing judicial oversight might reduce errors though I am
dubious but in a way that would seriously slow down the speed of the program, which is all-important
if the mission is to stop terrorists. And perhaps Congress should think about ways to remedy any privacy
violations in the future. But to end the program because it does not have an error rate of zero is to
impose a demand on the NSA that no other government program, foreign or domestic, military or
civilian, could survive.
Data collection is specifically key to immediate action against terror attacks

Baker, Foreign Policy, 13
[Stewart, 6-6-13, Foreign Policy, Why the NSA Needs Your Phone Calls...,
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/06/why_the_nsa_needs_your_phone_calls, accessed 7-12-14,
AAZ]
But why, you ask, would the government collect all these records, even subject to minimization,
especially when Wyden was kicking up such a fuss about it? And, really, what's the justification for
turning the data over to the government, no matter how strong the post-collection rules are?
To understand why that might seem necessary, consider this entirely hypothetical example. Imagine
that the United States is intercepting al Qaeda communications in Yemen. Its leader there calls his
weapons expert and says, "Our agent in the U.S. needs technical assistance constructing a weapon for
an imminent operation. I've told him to use a throwaway cell phone to call you tomorrow at 11 a.m.
on your throwaway phone. When you answer, he'll give you nothing other than the number of a second
phone. You will buy another phone in the bazaar and call him back on the second number at 2 p.m."
Now, this is pretty good improvised tradecraft, and it would leave the government with no idea where or
who the U.S.-based operative was or what phone numbers to monitor. It doesn't have probable cause to
investigate any particular American. But it surely does have probable cause to investigate any American
who makes a call to Yemen at 11 a.m., Sanaa time, hangs up after a few seconds, and then gets a call from
a different Yemeni number three hours later. Finding that person, however, wouldn't be easy, because
the government could only identify the suspect by his calling patterns, not by name.
So how would the NSA go about finding the one person in the United States whose calling pattern
matched the terrorists' plan? Well, it could ask every carrier to develop the capability to store all
calls and search them for patterns like this one. But that would be very expensive, and its effectiveness
would really only be as good as the weakest, least cooperative carrier. And even then it wouldn't work
without massive, real-time information sharing -- any reasonably intelligent U.S.-based terrorist would
just buy his first throwaway phone from one carrier and his second phone from a different carrier.
The only way to make the system work, and the only way to identify and monitor the one American
who was plotting with al Qaeda's operatives in Yemen, would be to pool all the carriers' data on
U.S. calls to and from Yemen and to search it all together -- and for the costs to be borne by all of us,
not by the carriers.
In short, the government would have to do it.

To repeat, this really is hypothetical; while I've had clearances both as the NSA's top lawyer and in the top
policy job at the Department of Homeland Security, I have not been briefed on this program. (If I had, I
wouldn't be writing about it.) But the example shows that it's not that hard to imagine circumstances in
which the government needs to obtain massive amounts of information about Americans yet also
needs to remain bound by the general rule that it may only monitors those whom it legitimately
suspects of being terrorists or spies.
The technique that squares that circle is minimization. As long as the minimization rules require that
all searches of the collected data must be justified in advance by probable cause, Americans are
protected from arbitrary searches. In the standard law enforcement model that we're all familiar with,
privacy is protected because the government doesn't get access to the information until it presents
evidence to the court sufficient to identify the suspects. In the alternative model, the government gets
possession of the data but is prohibited by the court and the minimization rules from searching it until it
has enough evidence to identify terror suspects based on their patterns of behavior.
That's a real difference. Plenty of people will say that they don't trust the government with such a large
amount of data -- that there's too much risk that it will break the rules -- even rules enforced by a twoparty, three-branch system of checks and balances. When I first read the order, even I had a moment of
chagrin and disbelief at its sweep.
But for those who don't like the alternative model, the real question is "compared to what"? Those
who want to push the government back into the standard law enforcement approach of identifying
terrorists only by name and not by conduct will have to explain how it will allow us to catch terrorists
who use halfway decent tradecraft -- or why sticking with that model is so fundamentally important that
we should do so even if it means more acts of terrorism at home.
Data collecting is key to counter terrorism only method

Thiessen, Washington Post, 13
[Marc A., former Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush, 6-10-13, American Enterprise
Institute, Big Brother isnt watching you, http://aei.org/article/foreign-and-defense-policy/terrorism/bigbrother-isnt-watching-you/, accessed 7-12-14, AAZ]
Why does the NSA need to collect all that data? One former national security official explained it to me
this way: If you want to connect the dots and stop the next attack, you need to have a field of dots.
That is what the NSA is collecting. But it doesnt dip into that field unless it comes up with a new
dot for example, a new terrorist phone number found on a cellphone captured in a raid. It will
then plug that new dot into the field of dots to find out which dots are connected to the new
number. If you are not communicating with that terrorist, your dot is not touched. But the NSA
needs to have the entire field of dots so it can unravel the network connected to that terrorist.
In the case of the PRISM program, the NSA is targeting foreign nationals, not U.S. citizens, and not
even individuals in the United States. And all of this collection is being done with a warrant, issued by a
federal judge, under authorities approved by Congress.

Moreover, what has been revealed are the outward-facing authorities of the NSA activities what
records the phone and Internet service providers are required to provide to the government. The leaks do
not describe the many inward-facing restrictions directed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court to the government that describe the conditions and limitations on when and how the data can be
accessed and how they can used.
Lets pray those restrictions are not revealed the terrorists would love to learn what they are.
If the critics dont think the NSA should be collecting this information, perhaps they would like to
explain just how they would have us stop new terrorist attacks. Terrorists dont have armies or
navies we can track with satellites. There are only three ways we can get information to prevent
terrorist attacks:
The first is interrogation getting the terrorists to tell us their plans. But thanks to Barack Obama, we
dont do that anymore.
The second is penetration, either by infiltrating agents into al-Qaeda or by recruiting operatives from
within the enemys ranks. This is incredibly hard and it got much harder, thanks to the leak exposing a
double agent, recruited in London by British intelligence, who had penetrated al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula and helped us break up a new underwear bomb plot in Yemen forcing the extraction of the
agent.
That leaves signals intelligence monitoring the enemys phone calls and Internet communications
as our principal source of intelligence to stop terrorist plots. Now the same critics who demanded
Obama end CIA interrogations are outraged that he is using signals intelligence to track the terrorists.
Well, without interrogations or signals intelligence, how exactly is he supposed to protect the
country?

Nuclear Terrorism Risk

Undeterred terrorism causes nuclear attacks extinction
Hellman, Stanford University professor emeritus, 08
[Martin E., Spring 2008, The Engineering Honor Society, The Bent OF TAU BETA PI,
http://www.nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf, pages 14-15, accessed 7-13-14, AAZ]
The threat of nuclear terrorism looms much larger in the publics mind than the threat of a full-scale
nuclear war, yet this article focuses primarily on the latter. An explanation is therefore in order before
proceeding. A terrorist attack involving a nuclear weapon would be a catastrophe of immense
proportions: A 10-kiloton bomb detonated at Grand Central Station on a typical work day would likely
kill some half a million people, and inflict over a trillion dollars in direct economic damage. America and
its way of life would be changed forever. [Bunn 2003, pages viii-ix]. The likelihood of such an attack
is also significant. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has estimated the chance of a nuclear
terrorist incident within the next decade to be roughly 50 percent [Bunn 2007, page 15]. David
Albright, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, estimates those odds at less than one percent, but notes,
We would never accept a situation where the chance of a major nuclear accident like Chernobyl would
be anywhere near 1% .... A nuclear terrorism attack is a low-probability event, but we cant live in a world
where its anything but extremely low-probability. [Hegland 2005]. In a survey of 85 national security
experts, Senator Richard Lugar found a median estimate of 20 percent for the probability of an attack
involving a nuclear explosion occurring somewhere in the world in the next 10 years, with 79 percent of
the respondents believing it more likely to be carried out by terrorists than by a government [Lugar
2005, pp. 14-15]. I support increased efforts to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, but that is not
inconsistent with the approach of this article. Because terrorism is one of the potential trigger
mechanisms for a full-scale nuclear war , the risk analyses proposed herein will include estimating the
risk of nuclear terrorism as one component of the overall risk. If that risk, the overall risk, or both are
found to be unacceptable, then the proposed remedies would be directed to reduce which- ever risk(s)
warrant attention. Similar remarks apply to a number of other threats (e.g., nuclear war between the U.S.
and China over Taiwan). his article would be incomplete if it only dealt with the threat of nuclear
terrorism and neglected the threat of full- scale nuclear war. If both risks are unacceptable, an effort to
reduce only the terrorist component would leave humanity in great peril. In fact, societys almost total
neglect of the threat of full-scale nuclear war makes studying that risk all the more important. The cosT of
World War iii The danger associated with nuclear deterrence depends on both the cost of a failure
and the failure rate.3 This section explores the cost of a failure of nuclear deterrence, and the next
section is concerned with the failure rate. While other definitions are possible, this article defines a
failure of deterrence to mean a full-scale exchange of all nuclear weapons available to the U.S. and
Russia, an event that will be termed World War III. Approximately 20 million people died as a result
of the first World War. World War IIs fatalities were double or triple that numberchaos prevented a
more precise determination. In both cases humanity recovered, and the world today bears few scars that
attest to the horror of those two wars. Many people therefore implicitly believe that a third World War
would be horrible but survivable, an extrapola- tion of the effects of the first two global wars. In that
view, World War III, while horrible, is something that humanity may just have to face and from which it

will then have to recover. In contrast, some of those most qualified to assess the situation hold a very
different view. In a 1961 speech to a joint session of the Philippine Con- gress, General Douglas
MacArthur, stated, Global war has become a Frankenstein to destroy both sides. If you lose, you
are annihilated. If you win, you stand only to lose. No longer does it possess even the chance of the
winner of a duel. It contains now only the germs of double suicide. Former Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara expressed a similar view: If deterrence fails and conflict develops, the present U.S. and
NATO strategy carries with it a high risk that Western civilization will be destroyed [McNamara
1986, page 6]. More recently, George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn4 echoed
those concerns when they quoted President Reagans belief that nuclear weapons were totally irrational,
totally inhu- mane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.
[Shultz 2007] Official studies, while couched in less emotional terms, still convey the horrendous toll that
World War III would exact: The resulting deaths would be far beyond any precedent. Executive branch
calculations show a range of U.S. deaths from 35 to 77 percent (i.e., 79-160 million dead) a change in
targeting could kill somewhere between 20 million and 30 million additional people on each side ....
These calculations reflect only deaths during the first 30 days. Additional millions would be injured, and
many would eventually die from lack of adequate medical care millions of people might starve or
freeze during the following winter, but it is not possible to estimate how many. further millions
might eventually die of latent radiation effects. [OTA 1979, page 8] This OTA report also noted the
possibility of serious ecological damage [OTA 1979, page 9], a concern that assumed a new potentiality
when the TTAPS report [TTAPS 1983] proposed that the ash and dust from so many nearly simultaneous
nuclear explosions and their resultant fire- storms could usher in a nuclear winter that might erase
homo sapiens from the face of the earth, much as many scientists now believe the K-T Extinction that
wiped out the dinosaurs resulted from an impact winter caused by ash and dust from a large asteroid or
comet striking Earth. The TTAPS report produced a heated debate, and there is still no scientific
consensus on whether a nuclear winter would follow a full-scale nuclear war. Recent work [Robock 2007,
Toon 2007] suggests that even a limited nuclear exchange or one between newer nuclear-weapon states,
such as India and Pakistan, could have devastating long-lasting climatic consequences due to the large
volumes of smoke that would be generated by fires in modern megacities. While it is uncertain how
destructive World War III would be, prudence dictates that we apply the same engineering conservatism
that saved the Golden Gate Bridge from collapsing on its 50th anniversary and assume that preventing
World War III is a necessitynot an option.
Nuclear terrorism is probable new report

Burns, Associated Press, 1-8-14
(Robert, RealClear Defense, The Dangerous Weak Link in Nuclear Security,
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2014/01/08/the_dangerous_weak_link_in_nuclear_security_107
023.html, accessed 7-4-14, AFB)
The number of countries possessing the makings of a nuclear bomb has dropped by almost one-quarter
over the past two years, but there remain "dangerous weak links" in nuclear materials security that
could be exploited by terrorist groups with potentially catastrophic results, according to a study
released Wednesday.

The study by the Nuclear Threat Initiative said Mexico, Sweden, Ukraine, Vietnam, Austria, the Czech
Republic and Hungary have removed all or most of the weapons-usable nuclear materials on their
territories since 2012.
That has reduced the number of countries with one kilogram or more of weapons-usable nuclear
materials, such as highly enriched uranium, to 25 from 32 two years ago, the study said. The Nuclear
Threat Initiative is a private, non-partisan group that advocates reducing the risk of the spread of nuclear
weapons.
"That's a big deal," said Page Stoutland, vice president of the group's nuclear materials security program.
"Getting rid of the materials is one less country where somebody could potentially steal weapons-usable
material."
Among the 25 countries with weapons-usable nuclear materials, the study ranked Australia as having the
best nuclear security arrangements, followed by Canada, Switzerland, Germany and Norway. The U.S.
was ranked No. 11. The weakest nuclear security is in Israel, Pakistan, India, Iran and North Korea,
according to the study, which assessed factors such as accounting methods, physical security and
transportation security.
The drop in the number of countries possessing such materials could be seen as modestly
encouraging for President Barack Obama's declared ambition to lock down all of the world's highly
enriched uranium and plutonium -- the building blocks of a nuclear weapon. There are an estimated
1,400 tons of highly enriched uranium and almost 500 tons of plutonium stored in hundreds of sites
around the world.
The report said a significant portion of these materials is poorly secured and vulnerable to theft or
sale on the black market. Relatively small amounts of highly enriched uranium or plutonium are
required to build a nuclear bomb, which is a declared ambition of terrorist groups such as alQaida.
"The result of a nuclear blast at the hands of terrorists or a rogue state would be catastrophic -with dire consequences that would stretch across the globe for economies, commerce, militaries,
public health, the environment, civil liberties and the stability of governments," the report said.
The Obama goal, first proclaimed in 2009, will be the focus of a summit meeting of world leaders in the
Netherlands in March. And although concern about the security of nuclear materials is generally directed
at Iran, North Korea and Pakistan, the study released Wednesday said the United States has its own
vulnerabilities.
It cited two recent incidents in the U.S. that point up imperfections in U.S. control of nuclear
weapons materials, including a July 2012 break-in by anti-war protesters at the Y-12 complex in
Oak Ridge, Tenn., that stores the nation's supply of weapons-grade uranium, makes nuclear
warhead parts and provides nuclear fuel for the Navy.
The study by the Nuclear Threat Initiative also cited the firing in October of the No. 2 commander
of U.S. Strategic Command, which is in charge of nuclear war planning and would operate nuclear
weapons if a president ordered their use. Vice Adm. Tim Giardina was fired amid allegations of
involvement with counterfeit gambling chips -- an allegation that raises questions about the
potential corruption of nuclear secrets. Giardina has been under investigation by the Naval Criminal

Investigative Service; results have not been released. The Giardina matter, combined with the breakin at Oak Ridge, suggests that "it is dangerous and inappropriate" to take the security of U.S.
nuclear materials for granted, the Nuclear Threat Initiative study said.
High risk of nuke terror, causes global escalation

Dvorkin, Major General (retired), 12
(Vladimir, doctor of technical sciences, professor, and senior fellow at the Center for International
Security of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of
Sciences. The Center participates in the working group of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear
Terrorism, 9/21/12, "What Can Destroy Strategic Stability: Nuclear Terrorism is a Real Threat,"
belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22333/what_can_destroy_strategic_stability.html, accessed 9-1713, CMM)
Hundreds of scientific papers and reports have been published on nuclear terrorism. International conferences have been held on this threat with
participation of Russian organizations, including IMEMO and the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies. Recommendations on how to combat
the threat have been issued by the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, Pugwash Conferences on Science and
World Affairs, Russian-American Elbe Group, and other organizations. The UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the
Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism in 2005 and cooperation among intelligence services of leading states in this sphere is developing. At
the same time, these
efforts fall short for a number of reasons, partly because various acts of nuclear
terrorism are possible. Dispersal of radioactive material by detonation of conventional explosives
(dirty bombs) is a method that is most accessible for terrorists. With the wide spread of
radioactive sources, raw materials for such attacks have become much more accessible than
weapons-useable nuclear material or nuclear weapons. The use of dirty bombs will not cause many immediate
casualties, but it will result into long-term radioactive contamination, contributing to the spread of panic
and socio-economic destabilization. Severe consequences can be caused by sabotaging nuclear power
plants, research reactors, and radioactive materials storage facilities. Large cities are especially
vulnerable to such attacks. A large city may host dozens of research reactors with a nuclear power
plant or a couple of spent nuclear fuel storage facilities and dozens of large radioactive materials
storage facilities located nearby. The past few years have seen significant efforts made to enhance organizational and physical
aspects of security at facilities, especially at nuclear power plants. Efforts have also been made to improve security
culture. But these efforts do not preclude the possibility that well-trained terrorists may be able to
penetrate nuclear facilities. Some estimates show that sabotage of a research reactor in a metropolis
may expose hundreds of thousands to high doses of radiation. A formidable part of the city would
become uninhabitable for a long time. Of all the scenarios, it is building an improvised nuclear
device by terrorists that poses the maximum risk. There are no engineering problems that cannot
be solved if terrorists decide to build a simple gun-type nuclear device. Information on the design
of such devices, as well as implosion-type devices, is available in the public domain . It is the acquisition of
weapons-grade uranium that presents the sole serious obstacle. Despite numerous preventive measures taken, we cannot rule out the possibility
that such
materials can be bought on the black market. Theft of weapons-grade uranium is also
possible. Research reactor fuel is considered to be particularly vulnerable to theft, as it is scattered
at sites in dozens of countries. There are about 100 research reactors in the world that run on
weapons-grade uranium fuel, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A
terrorist gun-type uranium bomb can have a yield of least 10-15 kt, which is comparable to the
yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion of such a bomb in a modern metropolis can

kill and wound hundreds of thousands and cause serious economic damage. There will also be longterm sociopsychological and political consequences. The vast majority of states have introduced unprecedented security
and surveillance measures at transportation and other large-scale public facilities after the terrorist attacks in the United States, Great Britain,
Italy, and other countries. These measures have proved burdensome for the countries populations, but the public has accepted them as necessary.
A nuclear terrorist attack will make the public accept further measures meant to enhance control
even if these measures significantly restrict the democratic liberties they are accustomed to.
Authoritarian states could be expected to adopt even more restrictive measures . If a nuclear terrorist act
occurs, nations will delegate tens of thousands of their secret services best personnel to investigate
and attribute the attack. Radical Islamist groups are among those capable of such an act. We can
imagine what would happen if they do so, given the anti-Muslim sentiments and resentment that conventional
terrorist attacks by Islamists have generated in developed democratic countries. Mass deportation
of the non-indigenous population and severe sanctions would follow such an attack in what will
cause violent protests in the Muslim world. Series of armed clashing terrorist attacks may follow.
The prediction that Samuel Huntington has made in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order may come true. Huntingtons book clearly demonstrates that it is not Islamic extremists that are
the cause of the Western worlds problems. Rather there is a deep, intractable conflict that is rooted in the fault lines that run between Islam and
Christianity. This is especially dangerous for Russia because these fault lines run across its territory. To
sum it up, the political leadership of Russia has every reason to revise its list of factors that could undermine strategic stability. BMD does not
deserve to be even last on that list because its effectiveness in repelling massive missile strikes will be extremely low. BMD systems can prove
useful only if deployed to defend against launches of individual ballistic missiles or groups of such missiles. Prioritization of other destabilizing
factorsthat could affect global and regional stabilitymerits a separate study or studies. But even without them I can conclude that nuclear
terrorism should be placed on top of the list. The
threat of nuclear terrorism is real, and a successful nuclear

terrorist attack would lead to a radical transformation of the global order. All of the threats on the revised list
must become a subject of thorough studies by experts. States need to work hard to forge a common understanding of these threats and develop a
strategy to combat them.

Nuclear Terrorism Retaliation

The impact is nuclear miscalc
Barrett, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute Research director, et al. 13
[Anthony, PhD in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, Fellow in the RAND
Stanton Nuclear Security Fellows Program, and Director of Research at Global Catastrophic Risk
InstituteAND Seth Baum, PhD in Geography from Pennsylvania State University, Research Scientist at
the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, and Executive Director of Global Catastrophic Risk Institute
AND Kelly Hostetler, BS in Political Science from Columbia and Research Assistant at Global
Catastrophic Risk Institute, June 24, 2013, Analyzing and Reducing the Risks of Inadvertent Nuclear
War Between the United States and Russia, Science & Global Security: The Technical Basis for Arms
Control, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation Initiatives, Volume 21, Issue 2,
http://sethbaum.com/ac/2013_NuclearWar.pdf, accessed: 3-30-14. CAS]
War involving significant fractions of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, which are by far the
largest of any nations, could have globally catastrophic effects such as severely reducing food
production for years,1 potentially leading to collapse of modern civilization worldwide and even the
extinction of humanity.2 Nuclear war between the United States and Russia could occur by various
routes, including accidental or unauthorized launch; deliberate first attack by one nation; and inadvertent
attack. In an accidental or unauthorized launch or detonation, system safeguards or procedures to
maintain control over nuclear weapons fail in such a way that a nuclear weapon or missile launches or
explodes without direction from leaders. In a deliberate first attack, the attacking nation decides to attack
based on accurate information about the state of affairs. In an inadvertent attack, the attacking nation
mistakenly concludes that it is under attack and launches nuclear weapons in what it believes is a
counterattack.3 (Brinkmanship strategies incorporate elements of all of the above, in that they involve
intentional manipulation of risks from otherwise accidental or inadvertent launches.4)
Over the years, nuclear strategy was aimed primarily at minimizing risks of intentional attack through
development of deterrence capabilities, though numerous measures were also taken to reduce
probabilities of accidents, unauthorized attack, and inadvertent war. For purposes of deterrence, both U.S.
and Soviet/Russian forces have maintained significant capabilities to have some forces survive a first
attack by the other side and to launch a subsequent counterattack. However, concerns about the extreme
disruptions that a first attack would cause in the other sides forces and command-and-control
capabilities led to both sides development of capabilities to detect a first attack and launch a counterattack before suffering damage from the first attack.5
Many people believe that with the end of the Cold War and with improved relations between the United
States and Russia, the risk of East-West nuclear war was significantly reduced.6 However, it has also
been argued that inadvertent nuclear war between the United States and Russia has continued to
present a substantial risk.7 While the United States and Russia are not actively threatening each
other with war, they have remained ready to launch nuclear missiles in response to indications of
attack.8

False indicators of nuclear attack could be caused in several ways. First, a wide range of events have
already been mistakenly interpreted as indicators of attack, including weather phenomena, a faulty
computer chip, wild animal activity, and control-room training tapes loaded at the wrong time.9 Second,
terrorist groups or other actors might cause attacks on either the United States or Russia that resemble
some kind of nuclear attack by the other nation by actions such as exploding a stolen or improvised
nuclear bomb,10 especially if such an event occurs during a crisis between the United States and
Russia.11 A variety of nuclear terrorism scenarios are possible.12 Al Qaeda has sought to obtain or
construct nuclear weapons and to use them against the United States.13 Other methods could involve
attempts to circumvent nuclear weapon launch control safeguards or exploit holes in their security.14
It has long been argued that the probability of inadvertent nuclear war is significantly higher during U.S.Russian crisis conditions,15 with the Cuban Missile Crisis being a prime historical example. It is possible
that U.S.-Russian relations will significantly deteriorate in the future, increasing nuclear tensions. There
are a variety of ways for a third party to raise tensions between the United States and Russia, making one
or both nations more likely to misinterpret events as attacks.16
Retaliation causes global nuclear war

Hellman, Stanford Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, 8
(Martin, Spring, Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence, http://nuclearrisk.org/3likely.php, accessed 9-913, CMM)
Nuclear proliferation and the specter of nuclear terrorism are creating additional possibilities for
triggering a nuclear war. If an American (or Russian) city were devastated by an act of nuclear
terrorism, the public outcry for immediate, decisive action would be even stronger than Kennedy had
to deal with when the Cuban missiles first became known to the American public. While the action
would likely not be directed against Russia, it might be threatening to Russia (e.g., on its borders) or
one of its allies and precipitate a crisis that resulted in a full-scale nuclear war. Terrorists with an
apocalyptic mindset might even attempt to catalyze a full-scale nuclear war by disguising their act
to look like an attack by the U.S. or Russia.
That escalates to global nuclear war

Speice, William and Mary JD Candidate, 6
[Patrick, February, 47 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 1427, Lexis]
The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist
groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist
attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human and economic
losses. n49 Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United States to discover the
perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and

potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict. N50 In addition to the threat posed by terrorists,
leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with
nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. n51 This
proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States [*1440] or its allies by
hostile states, n52 as well as increase the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United
States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.

Terrorism Impact Systemic

Terrorism is not just one-shot scenario it has systematic effects
Burke, CNN Belief Blog co-editor, 13
(Daniel, 10-28-13, CNN, Terrorist attacks and deaths hit record high, report shows,
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/28/terrorist-attacks-and-deaths-hit-record-high-report-shows/,
accessed 7-5-14, AFB)
As terrorism increasingly becomes a tactic of warfare, the number of attacks and fatalities soared to
a record high in 2012, according to a new report obtained exclusively by CNN. More than 8,500
terrorist attacks killed nearly 15,500 people last year as violence tore through Africa, Asia and the
Middle East, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism.
Thats a 69% rise in attacks and an 89% jump in fatalities from 2011, said START, one of the worlds
leading terrorism-trackers. Six of the seven most deadly groups are affiliated with al Qaeda, according to
START, and most of the violence was committed in Muslim-majority countries.
The previous record for attacks was set in 2011 with more than 5,000 incidents; for fatalities the previous
high was 2007 with more than 12,800 deaths.
Headquartered at the University of Maryland, START maintains the Global Terrorism Database, the most
comprehensive source of unclassified information about terrorist attacks, with statistics dating to 1970.
START, one of 12 Centers for Excellence funded by the Department of Homeland Security, plans to
release its full database in December but shared its early findings after a request by CNN.
This year is expected to outpace even 2012s record high. There were 5,100 attacks in the first six months
of 2013, said Gary LaFree, STARTs director, and the wave of violence shows few signs of ebbing.
In recent weeks, Al-Shabaab, a militant group based in Somalia, attacked a mall in Nairobi, Kenya,
leaving 67 dead; suicide bombers killed 81 at a church in Pakistan; and the Taliban took credit for killing
two police officers with a car bomb in Afghanistan.
To find and tally attacks like those, START's computers comb through 1.2 million articles from 50,000
media outlets each month with an algorithm to help identify and eliminate redundancies. Its 25-member
staff then studies, categorizes and counts each attack.
START's definition of terrorism closely mirrors that of the State Department and other experts. To be
counted as an act of terror, an incident has to be an intentional act or threat by a "non-state actor" that
meets two of these three criteria:
It was aimed at attaining a political, economic, religious or social goal.
It was intended to coerce, intimidate or convey a message to a larger group. It violated international
humanitarian law by targeting non-combatants. Part of the observed increase in 2012 may be due to

the fact that START has improved its data collection methods and is better than ever at finding and
categorizing terrorism, LaFree said. But he said the dramatic rise is not just a matter of having
better data.
We are convinced that a big chunk of this is real change in the world, LaFree said. Weve seen a
fairly steep upward trajectory in the total of terrorist attacks and fatalities worldwide.
Outside of small dips in 2004 and 2009, the number of attacks has steadily increased in the past decade,
according to START. The upward trend increases the likelihood that 2012s numbers are not an
aberration, LaFree said. Counterterrorism experts not affiliated with START also said attacks appear to be
occurring with increasing frequency.
Theres just a lot of killing going on along sectarian and religious lines, said Daniel Benjamin,
coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department from 2009 to 2012. And thats a worrisome
thing.
The reasons behind the rise are complex, experts say:
Weak and unstable states and corrupt or ineffective governments.
Poverty and high unemployment, particularly among young men.
Access to more lethal weaponry and increasing use of tactics like suicide bombings capable of killing
scores of bystanders.
A spike in sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, where ancient grudges give rise to
modern massacres.
The increasing use of terrorism as a tactic in war.
The distinction between the front line and home front has largely been erased as terrorism has become a
growing feature of contemporary warfare, said Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior adviser at the RAND
Corp. and the founder of its counterterrorism program.
But Jenkins also cautioned that terrorism is notoriously difficult to define, and the increase in attacks
does not necessarily mean the United States is losing the war on terror. He said it could just reflect a
shift in strategy among Syrian rebels and Afghani radicals, for example.
Still, experts say the apparent increase in civilian casualties is alarming. Gone are the days when
terrorist groups like the Irish Republican Army or Italys Red Brigade would try to keep casualties
low by issuing warnings, LaFree said.
If youre a terrorist group now and you want to get your message out, he said, the more people
you kill, the more successful youll be.

NSA Key to Solve Cyber Attacks

The NSA prevents cyber-attacks prevents collapse
Ingersoll, Business Insider, 13
[Geoffrey, 12-16-13, Business Insider, NSA Says It Foiled Plot To Destroy Our Economy By Bricking
Computers Across The US, http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-says-foiled-china-cyber-plot-2013-12,
accessed 7-12-14, AAZ]
The National Security Agency described for the first time a cataclysmic cyber threat it claims to
have stopped On Sunday's "60 Minutes."
Called a BIOS attack, the exploit would have ruined, or "bricked," computers across the country,
causing untold damage to the national and even global economy.
Even more shocking, CBS goes as far as to point a finger directly at China for the plot "While the
NSA would not name the country behind it, cyber security experts briefed on the operation told us it was
China."
The NSA says it closed this vulnerability by working with computer manufacturers.
But the BIOS attack sounds staggering. From the "60 Minutes" broadcast (emphasis ours):
Debora Plunkett, director of cyber defense for the NSA: One of our analysts actually saw that the
nation state had the intention to develop and to deliver to actually use this capability to destroy
computers.
John Miller: To destroy computers?
Debora Plunkett: To destroy computers. So the BIOS is a basic input/output system. It's, like, the
foundational component firmware of a computer. You start your computer up. The BIOS kicks in. It
activates hardware. It activates the operating system. It turns on the computer.
This is the BIOS system which starts most computers. The attack would have been disguised as a
request for a software update. If the user agreed, the virus wouldve infected the computer.
John Miller: So, this basically would have gone into the system that starts up the computer, runs the
systems, tells it what to do.
Debora Plunkett: That's right.
John Miller: ... and basically turned it into a cinder block.
Debora Plunkett: A brick.
John Miller: And after that, there wouldn't be much you could do with that computer.
Debora Plunkett: That's right. Think about the impact of that across the entire globe. It could literally
take down the U.S. economy.

John Miller: I don't mean to be flip about this. But it has kind of a little Dr. Evil quality to it that, "I'm
going to develop a program that can destroy every computer in the world." It sounds almost unbelievable.
Debora Plunkett: Don't be fooled. There are absolutely nation states who have the capability and the
intentions to do just that.
John Miller: And based on what you learned here at NSA, would it have worked?
Debora Plunkett: We believe it would have, yes.
John Miller: Is this anything that's been talked about publicly before?
Debora Plunkett: No, not not to this extent. This is the first time. The NSA, working with computer
manufacturers, was able to close this vulnerability, but they say there are other attacks occurring daily.
It's long been known that cyber attacks on critical infrastructure could level much of America's
economy. The difference here is the target.
Previous defense estimates focus on critical infrastructure water, electricity, nuclear power whereas
this BIOS attack is solely focused on destroying computers.
A similar attack occurred last year, when a militant group called "The Cutting Sword of Justice"
launched an attack on a Saudi oil company, Aramco, which disabled the hard drives of 30,000
computers, destroying all stored data.
Though CBS reports that the BIOS plot came from a "nation-state" (allegedly China), experts and
analysts largely don't expect massive cyber attacks from the world's largest nations due to the
interconnectivity of the global economy.
It's groups like "The Cutting Sword" whose attacks occur because of perceived inequality of that
economy that have the world's most powerful governments scrambling to patch up the holes in
their cyber security.
Data collection is key to prevent cyber-attacks causes global catastrophe

credibility key to solve cyber attacks
Goldsmith, former Department of Defense special counsel, 13
[Jack, Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School, 10-10-13, New Republic, We Need an
Invasive NSA, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115002/invasive-nsa-will-protect-us-cyber-attacks,
Ever since stories about the National Security Agencys (NSA) electronic intelligence-gathering
capabilities began tumbling out last June, The New York Times has published more than a dozen
editorials excoriating the national surveillance state. It wants the NSA to end the mass warehousing of
everyones data and the use of back doors to break encrypted communications. A major element of the
Times critique is that the NSAs domestic sweeps are not justified by the terrorist threat they aim to
prevent.

At the end of August, in the midst of the Times assault on the NSA, the newspaper suffered what it
described as a malicious external attack on its domain name registrar at the hands of the Syrian
Electronic Army, a group of hackers who support Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. The papers
website was down for several hours and, for some people, much longer. In terms of the sophistication of
the attack, this is a big deal, said Marc Frons, the Times chief information officer. Ten months earlier,
hackers stole the corporate passwords for every employee at the Times, accessed the computers of 53
employees, and breached the e-mail accounts of two reporters who cover China. We brought in the FBI,
and the FBI said this had all the hallmarks of hacking by the Chinese military, Frons said at the time. He
also acknowledged that the hackers were in the Times system on election night in 2012 and could
have wreaked havoc on its coverage if they wanted .
Such cyber-intrusions threaten corporate America and the U.S. government every day. Relentless
assaults on Americas computer networks by China and other foreign governments, hackers and
criminals have created an urgent need for safeguards to protect these vital systems, the Times
editorial page noted last year while supporting legislation encouraging the private sector to share
cybersecurity information with the government. It cited General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA,
who had noted a 17-fold increase in cyber-intrusions on critical infrastructure from 2009 to 2011 and who
described the losses in the United States from cyber-theft as the greatest transfer of wealth in
history. If a catastrophic cyber-attack occurs, the Timesconcluded, Americans will be justified in
asking why their lawmakers ... failed to protect them.
When catastrophe strikes, the public will adjust its tolerance for intrusive government measures.
The Times editorial board is quite right about the seriousness of the cyber- threat and the federal
governments responsibility to redress it. What it does not appear to realize is the connection between
the domestic NSA surveillance it detests and the governmental assistance with cybersecurity it
cherishes. To keep our computer and telecommunication networks secure, the government will
eventually need to monitor and collect intelligence on those networks using techniques similar to ones
the Timesand many others find reprehensible when done for counterterrorism ends.
The fate of domestic surveillance is today being fought around the topic of whether it is needed to stop Al
Qaeda from blowing things up. But the fight tomorrow, and the more important fight, will be about
whether it is necessary to protect our ways of life embedded in computer networks.
Anyone anywhere with a connection to the Internet can engage in cyber-operations within the
United States. Most truly harmful cyber-operations, however, require group effort and significant skill.
The attacking group or nation must have clever hackers, significant computing power, and the
sophisticated softwareknown as malwarethat enables the monitoring, exfiltration, or destruction of
information inside a computer. The supply of all of these resources has been growing fast for many
yearsin governmental labs devoted to developing these tools and on sprawling black markets on the
Internet.
Telecommunication networks are the channels through which malware typically travels, often
anonymized or encrypted, and buried in the billions of communications that traverse the globe each day.
The targets are the communications networks themselves as well as the computers they connect
things like the Times servers, the computer systems that monitor nuclear plants, classified documents on
computers in the Pentagon, the nasdaq exchange, your local bank, and your social-network providers.

To keep these computers and networks secure, the government needs powerful intelligence
capabilities abroad so that it can learn about planned cyber-intrusions. It also needs to raise defenses at
home. An important first step is to correct the market failures that plague cybersecurity. Through law or
regulation, the government must improve incentives for individuals to use security software, for private
firms to harden their defenses and share information with one another, and for Internet service providers
to crack down on the botnetsnetworks of compromised zombie computersthat underlie many cyberattacks. More, too, must be done to prevent insider threats like Edward Snowdens, and to control the
stealth introduction of vulnerabilities during the manufacture of computer componentsvulnerabilities
that can later be used as windows for cyber-attacks.
And yet thats still not enough. The U.S. government can fully monitor air, space, and sea for
potential attacks from abroad. But it has limited access to the channels of cyber-attack and cybertheft, because they are owned by private telecommunication firms, and because Congress strictly
limits government access to private communications. I cant defend the country until Im into all the
networks, General Alexander reportedly told senior government officials a few months ago.
For Alexander, being in the network means having government computers scan the content and metadata
of Internet communications in the United States and store some of these communications for extended
periods. Such access, he thinks, will give the government a fighting chance to find the needle of known
malware in the haystack of communications so that it can block or degrade the attack or exploitation. It
will also allow it to discern patterns of malicious activity in the swarm of communications, even when it
doesnt possess the malwares signature. And it will better enable the government to trace back an attacks
trajectory so that it can discover the identity and geographical origin of the threat.
Alexanders domestic cybersecurity plans look like pumped-up versions of the NSAs
counterterrorism-related homeland surveillance that has sparked so much controversy in recent
months. That is why so many people in Washington think that Alexanders vision has virtually no chance
of moving forward, as the Times recently reported. Whatever trust was there is now gone, a senior
intelligence official told Times.
There are two reasons to think that these predictions are wrong and that the government, with extensive
assistance from the NSA, will one day intimately monitor private networks.
The first is that the cybersecurity threat is more pervasive and severe than the terrorism threat and
is somewhat easier to see. If the Times website goes down a few more times and for longer periods, and
if the next penetration of its computer systems causes large intellectual property losses or a compromise
in its reporting, even the editorial page would rethink the proper balance of privacy and security. The
point generalizes: As cyber-theft and cyber-attacks continue to spread (and they will), and especially
when they result in a catastrophic disaster (like a banking compromise that destroys market
confidence, or a successful attack on an electrical grid), the public will demand government action to
remedy the problem and will adjust its tolerance for intrusive government measures.
At that point, the nations willingness to adopt some version of Alexanders vision will depend on the
possibility of credible restraints on the NSAs activities and credible ways for the public to monitor,
debate, and approve what the NSA is doing over time.
Which leads to the second reason why skeptics about enhanced government involvement in the network
might be wrong. The public mistrusts the NSA not just because of what it does, but also because of

its extraordinary secrecy. To obtain the credibility it needs to secure permission from the American
people to protect our networks, the NSA and the intelligence community must fundamentally
recalibrate their attitude toward disclosure and scrutiny. There are signs that this is happeningand
that, despite the undoubted damage he inflicted on our national security in other respects, we have
Edward Snowden to thank.
Cyber-attacks escalate to nuclear war

Fritz, International Commissions on Nuclear Non-proliferation, 09
[Jason, 2009, International Commissions on Nuclear Non-proliferation, Hacking Nuclear Command and
Control, http://www.academia.edu/5773652/Hacking_Nuclear_Command_and_Control, p. 1 and 2,
This paper will analyse the threat of cyber terrorism in regard to nuclear weapons. Specifically, this
research will use open source knowledge to identify the structure of nuclear command and control
centres, how those structures might be compromised through computer network operations, and how
doing so would fit within established cyber terrorists capabilities, strategies, and tactics. If access to
command and control centres is obtained , terrorists could fake or actually cause one nucleararmed state to attack another, thus provoking a nuclear response from another nuclear power . This
may be an easier alternative for terrorist groups than building or acquiring a nuclear weapon or
dirty bomb themselves. This would also act as a force equaliser, and provide terrorists with the
asymmetric benefits of high speed, removal of geographical distance, and a relatively low cost .
Continuing difficulties in developing computer tracking technologies which could trace the identity
of intruders, and difficulties in establishing an internationally agreed upon legal framework to guide
responses to computer network operations, point towards an inherent weakness in using computer
networks to manage nuclear weaponry. This is particularly relevant to reducing the hair trigger
posture of existing nuclear arsenals.
All computers which are connected to the internet are susceptible to infiltration and remote
control. Computers which operate on a closed network may also be compromised by various hacker
methods, such as privilege escalation, roaming notebooks, wireless access points, embedded exploits in
software and hardware, and maintenance entry points. For example, e-mail spoofing targeted at
individuals who have access to a closed network, could lead to the installation of a virus on an open
network. This virus could then be carelessly transported on removable data storage between the open and
closed network. Information found on the internet may also reveal how to access these closed networks
directly. Efforts by militaries to place increasing reliance on computer networks, including experimental
technology such as autonomous systems, and their desire to have multiple launch options, such as nuclear
triad capability, enables multiple entry points for terrorists. For example, if a terrestrial command centre is
impenetrable, perhaps isolating one nuclear armed submarine would prove an easier task. There is
evidence to suggest multiple attempts have been made by hackers to compromise the extremely low
radio frequency once used by the US Navy to send nuclear launch approval to submerged
submarines. Additionally, t he alleged Soviet system known as Perimetr was designed to

automatically launch nuclear weapons if it was unable to establish communications with Soviet
leadership . This was intended as a retaliatory response in the event that nuclear weapons had
decapitated Soviet leadership; however it did not account for the possibility of cyber terrorists
blocking communications through computer network operations in an attempt to engage the system.
Should a warhead be launched, damage could be further enhanced through additional computer
network operations. By using proxies, multi-layered attacks could be engineered. Terrorists could
remotely commandeer computers in China and use them to launch a US nuclear attack against
Russia. Thus Russia would believe it was under attack from the US and the US would believe China
was responsible. Further, emergency response communications could be disrupted, transportation could
be shut down, and disinformation, such as misdirection, could be planted, thereby hindering the disaster
relief effort and maximizing destruction. Disruptions in communication and the use of disinformation
could also be used to provoke uninformed responses. For example, a nuclear strike between India
and Pakistan could be coordinated with Distributed Denial of Service attacks against key networks,
so they would have further difficulty in identifying what happened and be forced to respond quickly.
Terrorists could also knock out communications between these states so they cannot discuss the
situation. Alternatively, amidst the confusion of a traditional large-scale terrorist attack, claims of
responsibility and declarations of war could be falsified in an attempt to instigate a hasty military
response. These false claims could be posted directly on Presidential, military, and government websites.
E-mails could also be sent to the media and foreign governments using the IP addresses and e-mail
accounts of government officials. A sophisticated and all encompassing combination of traditional
terrorism and cyber terrorism could be enough to launch nuclear weapons on its own, without the need for
compromising command and control centres directly.

NSA Key to Solve Proliferation

Strong NSA is key to preventing networks of proliferation
Rovner, Southern Methodist University, associate director of political science, Long,
Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs associate
professor, 14
[Joshua, Austin, 1-2-14, Foreign Policy, Reckless Reforms,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/02/reckless_reforms_nsa, accessed 7-12-14, AAZ]
Up to now, the debate about the NSA has focused on the balance between discovering information
about terrorists and protecting the rights of citizens. This is understandable, as the legal basis for the
NSA programs is the Patriot Act, and because the White House justifies metadata collection on the same
grounds. But characterizing the issue as a choice between counterterrorism and civil liberties is
simplistic and misleading. The review group admirably stresses that there are security concerns
that go beyond terrorism, but it then fails to consider the value of metadata in addressing a host of
challenges the intelligence community is facing. Efforts to combat state-sponsored industrial
espionage, for example, require painstaking counterintelligence work. Efforts to break up
transnational proliferation networks are also likely to benefit from metadata collection; this is a
logical way to map the networks and see how they operate, which may be one reason why the
Obama administration is fighting so hard to keep the NSA programs alive.

Links

Link Uniqueness

No Action on Oceans Now

No congressional action coming on oceans now
Russell, Fox News, 7-9-14
[George, Fox News, Fishing in murky waters, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/09/fishing-inmurky-waters-administrations-secretive-oceans-policies-come-under/, accessed 7-10-14, AFB]
For its part, the administration has declared that no additional funding beyond regular department
budgets is being used to implement the overall oceans policy, and it has made no announcements
about additional staffing related to the implementation.
The same holds true for the administrations National Oceans Implementation Plan, released in
April 2013. The policy does not create new regulations, supersede current regulations, or modify
any agencys established mission, jurisdiction or authority, the document relates. Nor does it
redirect congressionally-appropriated funds, or direct agencies to divert funds from existing
programsall things that might trigger the legal need for congressional approval.

No Legislative Action Now

No controversial policies before midterms
OToole, Defense One politics reporter, 6/25/14
[Molly, 6/25/2014, Defense One, With 28 Days Left, What Can Congress Do?,
http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2014/06/28-days-left-what-can-congress-do/87304/, accessed
7/13/14 CK]
When Congress breaks Thursday for the Fourth of July recess, it will have only 28 days left to work
before Election Day.
As members leave town, they also leave on the to-do list the National Defense Authorization Act,
more than 50 ambassador nominations to hotspots such as Iraq and Egypt and even expedited,
bipartisan legislation to overhaul the embattled Department of Veterans Affairs. The White House
and members of both parties are putting the pressure on congressional leadership to act but this
infamously do-nothing 113th Congress is unlikely to hold votes that could make lawmakers
vulnerable before the November midterm elections, leaving crucial national security, foreign policy
and veterans legislation in limbo.

Ocean Policy

Ocean Policy Controversial

Ocean policy has empirically been polarized sparks fights over environmental
issues and spending and angers GOP
Eilperin, The Washington Post, 12
[Juliet, October 28, 2012, The Washington Post, National ocean policy sparks partisan fight,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/national-ocean-policy-sparks-partisanfight/2012/10/28/af73e464-17a7-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_story.html, accessed 7/7/14, GNL]
Partisan battles are engulfing the nations ocean policy, showing that polarization over
environmental issues doesnt stop at the waters 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 countrys 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. Obamas 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 panels 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. Whats
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 administrations 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
administrations approach.
In March, ESPN Outdoors published a piece arguing that the policy could prohibit U.S. citizens from
fishing some of the nations 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 nations 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 interests.
Brent Greenfield, the groups executive director, said that 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 Delawares coastal-programs administrator and is slated to co-chair the MidAtlantics 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 Southerlands 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 Ive seen thats become partisan. I do not think it will be the last.
Congress is more polarized than ever no ocean policy will sail through and 09
proves
Helvarg, Blue Frontier Campaign president, 14
[David, an American journalist and environmental activist and the founder and president of the marine
conservation lobbying organization Blue Frontier Campaign, 2/14/14, The oceans demand our
attention, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/198361-the-oceans-demand-ourattention, accessed 7/11/14, GNL]
The latest battle over the future of Americas ocean frontier is being fought out in a seemingly
unrelated bill in Congress. Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) recently introduced his
National Endowment for the Oceans rider to the Senate version of the Water Resources
Development Act (WRDA), which funds the Army Corps of Engineers to work on dams, dredging
and flood control. The Endowment would establish a permanent fund based on offshore energy
revenue for scientific research and coastal restoration.
On the House side Tea Party Republican Rep. Bill Flores (Texas) has a rider to cancel out any funding
that might allow the Army Corps to participate in the Obama administrations National Ocean Policy,
which he claims would empower the EPA to control the property of his drought-plagued constituents
should any rain (generated by the ocean) land on their rooftops.
One rider represents a constructive addition and the other a paranoid partisan impediment to an
ocean policy aimed at coordinating federal agencies in ways that could reduce conflict, redundancy
and government waste, putting urban planning in the water column, in the words of former

Commandant of the Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen. Allen, who coordinated federal disaster
response to Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil blow out understands the importance of working
together when responding to a disaster. And like it or not, overfishing, pollution, coastal sprawl and
climate change have created an ongoing disaster in our public seas.
Unfortunately progress towards a major reorganization of how we as a nation manage and benefit
from our ocean continues to advance with all the deliberate speed of a sea hare (large marine snail).
In 2004 ocean conservationists held their first Blue Vision Summit in Washington D.C. It was there
Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) called for a Big Ocean Bill, to incorporate many of the
recommendations of the 2003 Pew Oceans Commission and 2004 U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy,
the first blue ribbon panels to examine the state of Americas blue frontier in over three decades.
During his presidency, George W. Bush established major marine reserves in the Pacific, but otherwise
ignored his own federal commissions recommendations along with those of the Pew group headed by
future Secretary of Defense (now retired), Leon Panetta. As a result Americas seas continue to be
poorly managed by 24 different federal agencies taking a piecemeal approach to their oversight
under 144 separate laws.
In the fall of 2008, Oregon State marine ecologist Dr. Jane Lubchenco met with then President-elect
Obama in Chicago. There, he offered her the job of running The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), and she suggested he promote an ocean policy based on the two commissions
recommendations that he agreed to do.
By the time of the 2009 Blue Vision Summit it was clear Congress had become too polarized to pass
major ocean reform legislation at the level of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the last
century. Still, activists gathered there were thrilled to hear the new White House Council on
Environmental Quality Chair, Nancy Sutley, announce plans for a new National Ocean Policy initiative
by the Obama administration. This was followed by a series of six public hearings over the next year held
in different parts of the country. Ocean conservationists were able to mobilize thousands of people and 80
percent of public comments favored moving forward with a policy of ecosystem-based regional planning
for ocean uses.
In July 2010, in the wake of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama finally
signed the National Ocean Policy as an administrative directive. NOAA then held a series of
additional hearings to engage stakeholders during which the oil and gas industry tried to apply the
brakes (why support a level playing field when you already own the field).
In 2012, CEQ finally announced that nine regional planning bodies would be established to get the ocean
policy implemented.
In 2013, during the 4th Blue Vision Summit activists held the largest Ocean Hill Day in history, a
citizens lobby from 21 states that included over 100 meetings with Senators, House members and
their staffs to advocate for getting the National Ocean Policy underway.
Still, today in early 2014, only four of the nine regional bodies have held meetings. In New England,
participation by the states, tribal governments, fishermen, environmentalists and others have seen a strong
launch. In the mid-Atlantic, its been more a case of different federal agencies talking to each other
without much transparency or citizen participation. Initial meetings have also been held in the Caribbean
and the Western Pacific, including Hawaii.

Although the course forward seems as slow as that sea hare, its also clear the public wants action for our
ocean, coasts and the communities that depend on them. One can only hope (and insist) that by the end of
the Obama presidency in 2016 we see some tangible improvements in how we treat our ocean through
better coordination and planning among agencies and stakeholders. Good models for this kind of
sustainable ocean use already exist in states like California.
At that point we can raise our public seas to the level of public policy and begin to balance recreation,
ports and shipping, wildlife protection, clean energy, coastal climate adaptation, food security, national
security, exploration and science to sustain both our economy and the health of the ocean.
Its past time we get serious about moving forward on ocean policy and restoring the blue in our red,
white and blue.

Ocean Policy Spends Political Capital

Gaining support for ocean policy requires political capital NOP proves
Migliaccio, Vermont Journal of Environmental Law Senior Head Notes Editor, 14
[Emily, JD, 2014, THE NATIONAL OCEAN POLICY: CAN IT REDUCE MARINE POLLUTION
AND STREAMLINE OUR OCEAN BUREAUCRACY? Volume 15, Issue 3, , Pages 651-652 CK]
Garnering robust national support and leadership is critical for the improvement of marine
pollution given the interconnectivity between landlocked regions, coastal regions, and the ocean.
Unfortunately, the JOC gave this category a C, noting that although the NOP laid good
groundwork, it lacked communication, stakeholder engagement, and tangible results. 162
Although the NOC successfully released strategic action plans and the draft Implementation Plan,
and organized the National Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning Workshop in June 2011, the
Councils work is far from complete.163
Comments submitted during various stages of NOP implementation reflect the disconnect between
stakeholders, notably industry stakeholders, and the NOC. For example, some raised concerns about the
effect of adopting a precautionary approach as suggested in one of the NOPs guiding stewardship
principles. The language of the relevant principle read: Decisions affecting the ocean, our coasts, and the
Great Lakes should be informed by and consistent with the best available science. Decision-making will
also be guided by a precautionary approach as reflected in the Rio Declaration of 1992, which states
in pertinent part, [w]here there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific
certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent
environmental degradation. 164
Many feared that this precautionary approach might mandate action or prohibit activities,
conceivably to the detriment of certain industries. However, the NOP Task Force clarified the
misconception by stating in part, precaution is a tool or approach . . . it is clear that the precautionary
approach does not mandate action or prohibit activities.165 In order to garner support from all
stakeholders, particularly in the current political environment, it is essential that the NOC
regularly involve all stakeholders during the actual implementation and future development of the
NOPs objectives and actions.
Ocean policy unpopular GOP has voted against the NOP agenda every time so far
Madsen, Pacific Fisheries Management Council chairwoman, 12
(Stephanie, vice president of the Pacific Seafood Processors Association, Summer, 2012, Pacific
Fisheries Review, National Ocean Policy: A New Bureaucracy That Could Compromise
Regional Fisheries Management,
http://www.pacificfisheriesreview.com/pfr_june12_story6.php, accessed 6/27/14, GNL)

The Administrations draft NOP Implementation Plan proposes 53 federal governmental actions
and nearly 300 milestones, with 158 of those milestones to be completed in 2012 or 2013. Congress is
cutting funding for most federal agencies and has not provided new funding for NOP
implementation, so where is the money coming from to fund these new activities? Commercial fishing
interests are concerned that money has been, and will be, diverted from under-funded core NOAA
Fisheries science and management programs to pay for a new bureaucracy and for new activities not
authorized by Congress.
Proponents are well aware of the tenuous authority of the Administration to implement the NOP, yet they
move ahead without apparent concern. These same proponents, however, insisted previously that
Congressional action to create a national ocean policy was necessary. NOP proponents supported bills
introduced in the previous four Congresses that proposed a national ocean policy, as well as many
of the councils and committees subsequently established through Executive Order. None of the bills
introduced in successive Congresses passed. In fact, none passed either body of Congress.
Now, without Congressional authorization or dedicated appropriations, the Administration states that
funding to implement the NOP, including ocean zoning activities, will come from repurposing existing
resources. The commercial fishing industry does not support repurposing core NOAA Fisheries science
and management programs to establish a new oceans bureaucracy that at the very least creates duplicative
fisheries management authority. It is a hollow argument advanced to date by the Administration that
repurposing funds creates efficiencies when, at least in the case of fisheries management, it creates
confusing, overlapping jurisdictional lines and duplicates existing resource management processes.
In May, the House of Representatives voted to prohibit certain federal agencies, including NOAA,
from spending taxpayer dollars on the NOP, in large part, because Congress has not authorized
many of the activities contained in the NOP implementation plan. Hopefully, the Senate will act, as
well. The Administration could show good faith by not moving forward with establishing ocean zoning
bodies until either Congress acts to define their scope of authority or the Administration appropriately
limits their mandate.
The Pacific Northwest and Alaska fishing industry are proud of our progressive and innovative approach
to properly managing ocean resources. And we are proud of our collaborative working relationship with
state and federal fishery managers. We do not welcome that relationship being put at risk by
implementation of an NOP that is being rushed forward without regard for constituents concerns.
Ocean policies are historically unpopular National Ocean Policy proves

Stauffer, Surfrider Foundation ocean program manager, 6/1/14
[Pete, 6/1/14, Surfrider Foundation, Texas Lawmaker Leads Attack on our National Ocean Policy,
http://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/congress-takes-aim-at-our-national-ocean-policy, accessed
7/9/14, GNL]
When the National Ocean Policy was established by President Obama in 2010 it signaled a serious
attempt to address the many shortcomings of our nations 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 enusure that future development will
mimize impacts to the environment and existing users.
Of course, such success stories do not resonate well in Washington D.C., where controversy rules
the day and political parties instinctively oppose each others 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 principles of the National Ocean Policy are taking hold in states and regions across
the country, even without the meaningful support of Congress.
That is why Congress needs to hear from people who care about (and depend upon) the ocean. Our ocean
ecoystems are too important to the nation's well-being to be subject to the usual politics. It's time for
Congress to provide a level of support and funding that's commensurate with efforts being made on the
ground. Let's elevate support for our National Ocean Policy across the political spectrum!
Ocean policies are unpopular with the GOP despite success stories NOP proves
Stauffer, Surfrider Foundation ocean program manager, 12
[Pete, 5/7/12, Surfrider Foundation, Why I Support the National Ocean Policy (And You Should Too,
http://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/why-i-support-the-national-ocean-policy-and-so-should-you,
So when President Obama established the National Ocean Policy (NOP) through an executive order in
July of 2010, it wasnt just another government initiative for me. It was a sign of hope that finally a real
attempt was being made to address the many shortcomings of our nations piecemeal approach to ocean
management, highlighted by the U.S. Ocean Commission, the Joint Oceans Commission, and many
others. In short, it was the promise of a new era in ocean and coastal stewardship.
Now, less than two years later, there are indeed encouraging signs of progress. The National Ocean
Council is building on the momentum of public listening sessions held around the country and
finalizing an Implementation Plan of federal actions to address key issues such as water quality,
ecosystem protection, science support, and marine spatial planning. Meanwhile, regional ocean
partnerships are coalescing in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the West Coast, and elsewhere, bringing
together states, Tribes, ocean stakeholders, and the public to address place-based needs and priorities.

Yet, despite these promising developments, the future of the National Ocean Policy is in jeopardy,
plagued by a lack of support and funding from congress. Just last month, yet another measure was
introduced in the House to restrict funding and implementation of the policy this despite the fact that the
policy is being advanced with existing agency resources! Furthermore, several Republican leaders
including Rep. Doc Hastings (WA), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, have
seized on the NOP as a partisan issue, labeling marine spatial planning as burdensome and
accusing the administration of regulatory overreach (I wont elaborate on Hastings proposals to
vastly expand offshore drilling or the donations he receives from oil & gas companies).
But the partisanship and political attacks in Washington D.C. are obscuring an important truth - the
principles of the National Ocean Policy are taking hold in states and regions across the country despite the
lack of support from the federal government. From the Pacific Northwest to New England, the Gulf of
Mexico to the Pacific Islands, regions are making real advances in ocean mapping, habitat restoration,
renewable energy siting, and other key areas. In my home state of Oregon, a process to create a marine
spatial plan for wave energy development has brought together community leaders, fishermen, surfers,
environmentalists, and developers as part of an effective public collaboration. The expected outcome: a
plan that will both protect the environment and existing ocean uses, while also advancing renewable
energy opportunities.
Ocean policy is unlikely to be successful other issues take priority even if popular
as LOST proves
McCarthy, Center for New American Security intern, & Nye, Harvard University
Distinguished Service professor, 9
[Michael McCarthy, Joseph S. Nye, 12/16/9,Center for New American Security, A New Approach to
Ocean Policy, http://www.cnas.org/blog/a-new-approach-to-ocean-policy-6301#.U73DifldUmM,
If you put your ear up to the Oval Office and listen very carefully, you can hear the gentle sound of
ocean waves lapping. Thats because the presidentially-mandated Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force
(hereafter the task force) has just released its full report to supplement the interim report (pdf) already
released in September. We have covered issues relating to the task force periodically on this blog, but
I wanted to create a one-stop reference on the task force for you, dear readers.
President Obama authorized the task force on June 12 (pdf). It is an interagency effort, guided by the
Council on Environmental Quality and consisting of representatives from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy,
and other agencies. The task force was charged with developing a recommendation for a national
policy that ensures protection, maintenance, and restoration of oceans, our coasts and the Great Lakes. It
will also recommend a framework for improved stewardship, and effective coastal and marine spatial
planning. (Note: though I hail from the greatest city in the country, Im not going to focus on the Great
Lakes here). To this end, task force members traveled the country and held a series of public meetings
(pdf all) to gather information on ocean issues. These matters may appear to be solely the purview of

environmental policy makers, but the worlds oceans raise major security issues for U.S. national security
policy makers as well.
The interim report notes that the oceans play a critical role in our Nation's transportation, economy,
and trade, as well as in the global mobility and readiness of our Armed Forces and the maintenance
of international peace and security. It goes on to state that:
Our national security interests are tightly linked to navigational rights and freedoms, as well as to
operational flexibility. Our national security and economic interests are also linked to our ability to secure
U.S. sovereign rights over resources in extensive marine areas off our coasts, to promote and protect U.S.
interests in the marine environment, and to ensure that our maritime interests are respected and
considered internationally.
One would be hard-pressed to find a nation that would argue otherwise. But the United States Senate
has historically defined U.S. maritime limitations differently from a number of nations. Many
United Nations member states have held themselves to an agreement about how to use and share
the worlds oceans: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). But despite
the best intentions of U.S. treaty negotiators, the Senate voted against ratification of the UNCLOS after it
was submitted in 1982. Political support for ratification has ebbed and flowed since then, with
detractors mainly arguing that the UNCLOS will contract U.S. sovereignty, damage the economy,
and threaten national security. The Bush administration ultimately favored ratification, and so does
the current administration, but the Senate has never voted in favor despite periodic attempts to
move the treaty out of committee.
Perhaps most important, there have been indications for years that the uniformed services support
ratification. Gen Richard Myers (USAF, ret), former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued for
ratification before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2004, saying (pdf):
Sustaining our overseas presence, responding to complex emergencies, prosecuting the global war on
terrorism, and conducting operations far from our shores are only possible if our ships and aircraft are
able to make unencumbered use of the sea and air lines of communication. Our naval and air forces must
be able to take advantage of the customary, established navigational rights that the Law of the Sea
Convention codifies. We strongly support US accession to the Convention.
In addition, the Navys Judge Advocate General corps hosts a document on its website called Eight
National Security Myths: United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, (pdf) which dispels the
notion (among others) that the UNCLOS will subject the U.S. military to international tribunals.
Well be watching to find out the actual policies that follow on the new reports recommendations. It will
be especially interesting to see if the administration can summon the political capital necessary to ratify
the UNCLOS after such a contentious year in Congress. Whatever happens, I dont think those gentle
waves will stop lapping at the Oval Office door anytime soon.

Congressional Opposition to Ocean Policy

Ocean policy has no support
Migliaccio, Vermont Supreme Court legal extern, 14
[Emily, Spring 2014, Vermont Law School, THE NATIONAL OCEAN POLICY: CAN IT REDUCE
MARINE POLLUTION AND STREAMLINE OUR OCEAN BUREAUCRACY?,
http://vjel.vermontlaw.edu/files/2014/04/Migliaccio_FORPRINT1.pdf, p. 646, accessed 7-6-14, AAZ]
The Obama Administration issued Executive Order 13,547, intending for Congress to "show support
for effective implementation of the NOP, including the establishment of an ocean investment
fund"--the hope being that Congress would codify the Order in subsequent legislation. n130 At
present, Congress is wrestling with some bills relating to the NOP; however, not all proposals
support the policy . For example, the House has adopted an amendment to the Water Resources and
Development Act ("WRDA") n131 that would bar the Obama Administration from implementing
marine spatial planning under the WRDA, specifically "preventing the Army Corps of Engineers and
other entities that receive money from the bill from implementing such planning as part of the National
Ocean Policy." n132 Then again, also before Congress is a bill that seeks to establish a National
Endowment for the Oceans, which would fund programs and activities to "restore, protect, maintain, or
understand living marine resources and their habitats and ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes resources. . . ."
n133 For this bill to pass, House and Senate members must agree to prioritize ocean conservation
and research, and allocate funds to [*647] the initiative. Although the NOP is appearing on the
Congressional docket, it is hard to find hope for successful ocean reform in the current
congressional atmosphere.

Energy Lobby Opposition to Ocean Policy

Powerful energy lobbies hate ocean policy- they have lots of clout on the floor
Eilperin, Washington Post Political reporter, 12
(Juliet, 10/28/12, Washington Post, National ocean policy sparks partisan fight,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/national-ocean-policy-sparks-partisanfight/2012/10/28/af73e464-17a7-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_story.html, Accessed 7/7/14, CLF)
Two influential groups anglers and energy firms have joined Republicans in questioning the
administrations approach.
In March, ESPN Outdoors published a piece arguing that the policy could prohibit U.S. citizens from
fishing some of the nations 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 nations 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 interests.
Brent Greenfield, the groups executive director, said that 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 Delawares coastal-programs administrator and is slated to co-chair the MidAtlantics 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 Southerlands 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 Ive seen thats become partisan. I do not think it will be the last.

Ocean Environmental Protection Controversial

Oceanic environmental protection draws fire from a variety of groups
Eilperin, Washington Post House of Representatives Reporter, 12
[Juliet, 10/28/12, The Washington Post, National ocean policy sparks partisan fight,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/national-ocean-policy-sparks-partisanfight/2012/10/28/af73e464-17a7-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_story.html, accessed 7/6/14, AC]
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
worlds largest marine sanctuary and double the area of ocean globally that is fully protected.
Im going to use my authority to protect some of our nations 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. Thats 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 Obamas 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.
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.
Its the closest thing Ive seen to the pristine ocean, said Enric Sala, a National Geographic explorer-inresidence who has researched the areas reefs and atolls since 2005.
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.

Even so, the designation is expected to face objections from the U.S. tuna fleet that operates in the
region. Fish caught in the area account for up to 3 percent of the annual U.S. tuna catch in the
western and central Pacific, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. When Bush created the
monument in 2009, he exempted sport fishing to address industry opposition.
Ocean conservation policy saps lawmakers political capital

Sielen, Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation senior fellow, 4/16/14
[Alan B., Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and
Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and former Deputy Assistant Administrator for
International Activities at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 4/16/2014, Foreign Affairs, Sea
Change: How to Save the Oceans http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141198/alan-b-sielen/seachange, accessed 7/7/14, GNL]
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 humaninduced 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 sewage-contaminated 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 have not eliminated all the other threats to the seas.
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.

Conservative Opposition to Ocean Policy

Conservatives oppose ocean policy it is Obama overreach
Eilperin, The Washington Post House of Representatives reporter, 13
(Juliet, 4-16-13, The Washington Post, White House finalizes national ocean policy,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/16/white-house-finalizes-national-oceanpolicy/, accessed 7-12-14, CLF)
The White House on Tuesday issued its final plan for managing the nation's oceans, outlining a strategy
that aims to coordinate the work of more than two dozen agencies and reconcile competing
interests including fishing, offshore energy exploration and recreational activities.
While environmentalists as well as some fishing industry officials and state authorities have
embraced the National Ocean Policy, it has infuriated conservatives, who describe it as an example
of how the Obama administration is overreaching and seeking to limit the rights of recreational
anglers and others. Nancy Sutley, who chairs the Council on Environmental Quality and co-chairs the
group overseeing the policy, said in a statement the plan embodies the type of efficient, collaborative
government that taxpayers, communities, and businesses expect from their federal government.
John P. Holdren, who directs the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chairs the
National Ocean Council along with Sutley, said the plan will help advance relevant science and its
application to decision-making regarding the ocean. Those measures include sharing data on severe
storms and sea level rise, as well as melting ice in the Arctic.
Several House Republicans have predicted the policy will expand the ability of the Environmental
Protection Agency and other agencies to regulate land-based activities since water from there eventually
flows to the ocean:

GOP Opposition to Ocean Policy

GOP hates ocean policies fear new policy allows for more regulations
Conathan, Center for American Progress Ocean Policy Director, 13
[Michael, 11/19/13, Center For American Progress, Establish the National Endowment for the Oceans,
http://americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2013/11/19/79615/establish-the-national-endowment-forthe-oceans/, accessed 6/27/14 CK]
Prior to final passage of its WRDA bill, the House voted 225193 to include an amendment by Rep. Bill
Flores (R-TX) that would prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineersthe primary agency regulated by
WRDAfrom participating in any activities related to the National Ocean Policy. Rep. Flores has
successfully included several similar anti-National Ocean Policy provisions to bills in the past,
despite its potential benefits for coastal states and regions.
The National Ocean Policy, initiated under President George W. Bush and implemented via
executive order by President Barack Obama in 2010, has become a punching bag for Flores and
other conservatives, particularly those on the Natural Resources Committee. They irrationally fear
that it could make an end run around congressional authority and lead to imposition of new
regulations. In reality, the policy permits government agencies to operate more efficiently and
reduce duplication of effort while allowing different regions of the country to prioritize the ocean issues
and concerns that matter most to them.
Ocean policy perceived an executive power grab NOP proves

Rep. Fleming, R-Louisiana, 12
[Rep. John Fleming, US Representative 4th Congressional District of Louisiana and chairman of the
Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs, 3/30/12, The Hill,
National Ocean Policy is an executive power grab, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-aenvironment/219309-national-ocean-policy-is-an-executive-power-grab, accessed 7/9/14, GNL]
Perhaps the simplest way to describe this policy and council is to envision a national zoning board
for oceans and all of the inland communities and activities that might affect the oceans. Youve
probably dealt with a local zoning board that keeps order between residential neighborhoods and busy
commercials areas. You may not always agree with their decisions, but we can all appreciate local control
over such matters.
President Obamas National Ocean Policy takes zoning to a massive scale, giving Washington pencil
pushers more power to decide what activities are acceptable in the ocean zones they create. And
when federal agencies are authorizing activities, the converse can be assumed: they will close off
other activities, and limit authorized activities only to approved zones. The uncertainty that results
will further limit economic growth.

Coastal communities have already felt the pain of tough economic times. Fishermen are having a hard
time making ends meet and many are seeing their harvest levels reduced, while their cost of doing
business continues to rise. The House subcommittee I chair has heard testimony describing how harvest
levels have been driven down by the lack of agency-funded stock assessments and the closing of fishing
grounds. Now, this proposed new policy threatens to take more money from fishery surveys, and will
create more closures.
To make matters worse, this new National Ocean Policy will reach far inland with new zoning plans,
and could use ocean water quality as a way of threatening even farming and forestry practices.
The presidents plan enhances uncertainty by giving precedent to ecosystem health over the
economic impact of human activities, even if those activities were previously authorized or occurring in
an area. That means government bureaucrats, working behind closed doors, may decide that their views
on climate change or water quality both priorities in the policy will win out over the longstanding
interests of people who have depended for decades on the oceans and waterways for their livelihood.
Imagine putting those decisions, along with the vague and undefined policy goals of the executive order,
in the hands of special interest groups whose agenda is to abolish virtually all human activity. The
litigation and court challenges will be endless, and the permits that fishermen and coastal
businesses need to continue making a living will be hard to come by.
The presidents plan, which has flown under the transparency and accountability radar, lists nearly 60
milestones for federal agencies to accomplish this year as they implement the policy, with another 92
milestones slated for 2013. Yet no federal agency has requested funding for these activities. That means
existing missions and management activities of several federal agencies will be put at risk because federal
dollars will be re-purposed to support this policy.
President Obamas National Ocean Policy should be authorized by specific legislation and funded through
the regular appropriations process. Implementing this power grab through an executive order, with funds
diverted from other Congressionally-appropriated programs is simply wrong. Existing laws already
manage fisheries, and we dont need a costly, massive, new, job-destroying layer of bureaucracy to
centralize more power in Washington, and jeopardize the liberties of hard-working citizens. Until
Congress receives answers to the questions we have asked about the authority and funding for this
National Ocean Policy, I will continue to oppose this policy.

GOP Opposition to Ocean Spending

Republicans hate ocean investmentempirically prove
Valentine, Climate Progress reporter, 14
[Katie, ClimateProgress Reporter, 3/29/14, Climate Progress, One House Republicans Latest
Plan to Undermine Climate Research,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/29/3420703/noaa-bill-more-weather-research/, accessed
7/9/14, AC]
After years of attempts at cutting the agencys funding, House Republicans want the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to focus more on predicting storms and less on
studying climate change.
The House is set to vote next week on a bill that would force NOAA to prioritize its forecasting over its
climate research. The bill, introduced last June by Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), wouldnt require NOAA
to stop its climate research, but it would require the agency to prioritize weather-related activities,
including the provision of improved weather data, forecasts, and warnings for the protection of life and
property and the enhancement of the national economy. Among other things, it would direct the Office
of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAAs research and development arm which studies
weather, climate and other environmental forces, to create new weather programs, including one
focused on tornado warnings.
Bridenstine, whose home state of Oklahoma was ravaged by severe tornadoes last year, said that the bills
intent was to protect lives and property by shifting funds from climate change research to severe weather
forecasting research.
But though scientists are still trying to determine what, if any, impact climate change has on tornadoes,
science has shown that climate change is a driver of other forms of extreme weather. Bridenstine is also a
known climate denier who last year asked President Obama to apologize to Oklahoma for investing in
climate change research.
We know that Oklahoma will have tornadoes when the cold jet stream meets the warm Gulf air, and we
also know that this President spends 30 times as much money on global warming research as he does on
weather forecasting and warning, he said.
Congress has tried to influence what NOAA spends its time and money on in the past, but it hasnt
always been in line with a pro-weather research agenda. In 2011, a House-passed bill cut funding for
NOAA satellite programs, which play a key role in weather forecasting, and in 2012, Republican
lawmakers proposed further cuts to the satellite program. NOAA was also hit by last summers
across-the-board sequester cuts, which forced NOAA to furlough employees so it could keep its
weather forecasting and satellite operations intact.
Already, NOAA spends more on weather forecasting than it does on climate research. In 2013,
NOAA spent about $742 million on local weather warnings and forecasts, compared to the $108 million it

spent on ocean, coastal and Great Lakes research and $176 million it spent on climate research. And
though the link between climate change and severe weather has grown clearer, NOAA has called for more
research into the potential link between climate change and tornadoes, which is not as well understood.

GOP Opposition to Ocean Regulation

Setting ocean regulations empirically conflicts with oil drilling massively
unpopular by G.O.P.
Greenberg, Conservative Outlooks, 11
[Carol, 6-23-11, Conservative Outlook, Obama raids SPR, oil rigs will be going, going, GONE,
http://conservative-outlooks.com/2011/06/23/obama-raids-spr-oil-rigs-will-be-going-going-gone/,
The above as I am sure everyone can recognize as a picture of an off-shore oil rig. Nice to see, right?
When they are in your own backyard. Like say, in the Gulf of Mexico, in Alaska, and off the Atlantic
coast.
But these oil rigs are disappearing. Rapidly. As a result of President Obamas energy policy that is
costing jobs and choking the economy. 12 of these rigs have gotten fed up with Obama and his
bureaucracy which includes the Department of the Interior (Ken Salazar, Secretary), the EPA, and the
Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management and Regulation Enforcement (BOEMRE, Michael Bromwich
heads) and moved to sunnier shores. Brazil, the north Atlantic and off the coast of Venezuela. Yep, to
Hugo Chavez territory.
I had the pleasure of being part of a conference call with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA #5),
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA #22) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA #1). All are part of the Energy
Action Team in the House.
Most of you are probably aware that today Obama raided the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 30
million barrels out of 727 million barrels. Enough to keep the U.S. supplied with oil and gasoline for a
mere 2 days, at the most. A political move which was a reaction to U.S. consumers ire about the rising
cost of gasoline and yet this action did not create one job .
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was created in 1973 and is meant to be used only when a dire
national emergency exists. It has been tapped only twice before: once under President George H.W. Bush
during the first Gulf War when the Iraqis set fire to oil fields and once again under George W. Bush
during hurricane Katrina when rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were at risk.
Where is the emergency today, Mr. Obama? It is a crisis of your own making. Slow-walking of oil and
gas rig permits, ping-ponging bureaucracy WITHIN the EPA, not between other agencies. A
moratorium in the Gulf, which a federal judge has ruled twice is illegal, yet DOI Secretary Ken Salazar is
not in jail for civil contempt, as any other person would be . The permatorium has cost over 13,000
jobs, and one company even has been investigating moving shop to Africa.
Shell has spent over $4 billion in the permit-process in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea, only to be told NO!
over and over again.

When the Department of Energy was created in 1977 with the mission to reduce our dependence on
foreign oil only 1/3 of our oil was purchased from overseas. Today, 2/3 of our oil is purchased from
countries who dont like us very much.
But the House Republican Conference, the House Natural Resources Committee and the House
Energy and Commerce Committee have all introduced common sense solutions to our domestic
energy policy which would save and create jobs and stimulate the economy.
Several are The Keystone Project, which would create and utilize a pipeline from Canada to the Gulf off
of Texas. Areas in Alaska would be open to drilling again. The permit process for oil and gas companies
must be done in an expeditious manner. The House has passed bills with bi-partisan support with the goal
of making the U.S. energy independent, however they have been blocked in the Senate by Harry Reid.
Its time for the American public to wake up and realize where the fault lies: not with the oil and gas
companies, or the Wall Street gurus; but with the present administration. When enough of these
roadblocks appear it is time to take action. The public must demand immediate results of their
congressional representatives whether they be Republican or Democrat.
Republicans are opposed to new ocean regulations previous years prove

Conathan, American Progress ocean policy director, 12
[Michael, 4-13-12, Center for American Progress, Fish on Fridays: Sensible Ocean Policy Falling Victim
to Political Games, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2012/04/13/11433/fish-onfridays-sensible-ocean-policy-falling-victim-to-political-games/, accessed 7-9-14, AAZ]
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 Obamas National Ocean Policy public enemy number
one.
Ever since its roll-out, the policyimplemented 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
Lakeshas been taking fire from opponents who cite it as an overreach that would spawn jobkilling 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).

Ocean Regulation Unpopular

Ocean regulations are unpopular and costly
World Bulletin News Desk 6/24/14
(Major world news network, 6/24/14, World Bulletin, Report warns world's oceans at point of collapse,
http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/139468/report-warns-worlds-oceans-at-point-of-collapse, accessed
6/30/14, BCG)
A new report by a group of former world leaders, including ex-prime minister Paul Martin, says fixing
our oceans will require unpopular , expensive changes.
64 per cent of the ocean surface isnt under the control and protection of a national government and The
Global Ocean Commission has put forward a report on the declining health of the planets high
seas.
The commission is a combination of public and private sector figures, including former heads of
state and ministers as well as business people, supported by scientific and economic advisors working
on ways to reverse the degradation of the ocean and address the failures of high seas governance.
Ocean regulation policies are unpopular with coastal voters

Sterne and Wilmot, Ocean Champions co-founders, 6
[Jack and David, co-founders of Ocean Champions which is a organization that supports politicians who
support regulating and protecting oceans, 3/1/6, Mother Jones, Oceans Policy: It's a Matter of Leadership
The problems facing our oceans have political solutions.,
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/oceans-policy-its-matter-leadership?page=2, accessed
7/9/14, GNL]
The politics of the ocean are often very different from other environmental issues. On the one hand,
the oceans have a few tireless champions like Rep. Sam Farr (D-Ca.) who represents the Monterey Bay
area. But consider that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), with generally one of the best environmental
voting records Congress, has been leading the fight against tough overfishing regulations in federal
law, largely because he has an active concentration of commercial fishermen in his district who
could place his re-election in jeopardy if he is not responsive to their demands, however short-sighted
they may be. And the senator who has shown the most leadership on fisheries policy is Sen. Ted Stevens
(R-AK.), better known for his efforts to open ANWR.
To help ocean conservationists build political power, in 2003 we launched the first political organizations
for the oceans, Ocean Champions and Ocean Champions Voter Fund, to help politicians who care about
the oceans get elected to Congress (and to defeat bad ones, like Rep. Richard Pombo and to brand
oceans as a political issue. Our early efforts have been promising. For instance, Ocean Champions

endorsed and supported 14 candidates in 2004; 11 were elected, including two brand-new members of
Congress (one Republican and one Democrat) who are already taking a leadership role in pushing for
positive fisheries legislation and opposing efforts to open up our oceans and coasts to new drilling for oil
and gas.
As Mother Jones' series of articles makes clear, though, time is short. More resources must be directed
by both national and grassroots organizations to the task of awakening the public. This is an issue
that should be even more compelling to the public than global warming, if only because so much of the
public recreates at the ocean. It will require an unprecedented public relations campaign, far
outstripping anything that has gone before it.
Such a successful campaign is going to require ocean conservationists to focus on a single message, one
that combines the seriousness of the threat with optimism that it can be overcome. That message must be
delivered by credible messengers over and over again until the public demands action.
Are we willing to create the kind of sustained and strategic campaign that persuades the public and our
political leaders that this is a crisis that threatens our future as a species? Are we also willing to invest in
electoral politics, to help elect members of both parties who will fight for the oceans? These questions
must be asked, and they must be answered. Its a matter of leadership.

GOP Opposition to National Ocean Policy (NOP)

NOP is on the chopping block new ocean policy will be no different
Herzog, UCLA Law Environmental Law and Policy Fellow, 13
[Megan, April 17, 2013, Legal Planet (site run by the UCLA and Berkeley Law Schools) Obama
Administration Releases National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan, http://legalplanet.org/2013/04/17/obama-administration-releases-national-ocean-policy-implementation-plan/,
accessed 6/27/14 CK]
Environmental groups, federal agency representatives, many federal and state lawmakers, and other ocean
users around the country applauded the National Ocean Policy. Some industry representatives and
federal lawmakers, howevermost notably, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), Chair of the House
Natural Resources Committeehave made it their mission to destroy the Policy.
Wait, some people actually are opposed to this the Policy? The National Ocean Policy has been
surprisingly controversial for an initiative that is focused on streamlining decision making and
using existing agency resources more efficiently, and which explicitly does not involve promulgation
of new regulations. Following enactment of the Policy, House lawmakers (with the support of oil and
gas producers, commercial fisherman, shippers, and other industry representatives) held various
hearings questioning the intended purpose and consequences of the Policy (see, e.g., an October 2011
House hearing on A Plan for Further Restrictions on Ocean, Coastal and Inland Activities) and even
made multiple attempts to block funding for implementation based on a vague claim that the
National Ocean Policy will result in ocean zoning. Hopefully, the common-sense approach of the
Implementation Plan will help to put these ungrounded fears to bed.
Conservatives backlash against executive orders regarding NOP

Conathan, American Progress Ocean Policy Director, 13
[Michael, November 19, 2013, Center For American Progress, Establish the National Endowment for the
Oceans, http://americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2013/11/19/79615/establish-the-nationalendowment-for-the-oceans/, accessed 6/27/14 CK]
Prior to final passage of its WRDA bill, the House voted 225193 to include an amendment by Rep. Bill
Flores (R-TX) that would prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineersthe primary agency regulated by
WRDAfrom participating in any activities related to the National Ocean Policy. Rep. Flores has
successfully included several similar anti-National Ocean Policy provisions to bills in the past,
despite its potential benefits for coastal states and regions.
The National Ocean Policy, initiated under President George W. Bush and implemented via
executive order by President Barack Obama in 2010, has become a punching bag for Flores and
other conservatives, particularly those on the Natural Resources Committee. They irrationally fear
that it could make an end run around congressional authority and lead to imposition of new

regulations. In reality, the policy permits government agencies to operate more efficiently and
reduce duplication of effort while allowing different regions of the country to prioritize the ocean issues
and concerns that matter most to them.

Sen. Rubio (R-FL) Opposes Ocean Policy

Rubio (R-FL) doesnt like new ocean policy
Conathan, American Progress Ocean Policy Director, 13
[Michael, 4-26-13, American Progress, An Ocean Champion in the White House,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2013/04/26/61493/an-oceanchampion-in-the-white-house/, accessed 7-9-14, AKS]
One aspect of the plan that drew a great deal of consternation is its call for comprehensive ocean
management on a regional scalein effect, the development of regional plans to prioritize certain
ocean activities in appropriate areas. Many coastal regions in this country are already participating in
what the implementation plan calls regional planning bodies, which are coordinated management
entities among neighboring states. In fact, several of these regional ocean partnerships predate even the
first draft of the National Ocean Policy released in 2010.
While the final implementation plan clearly articulates the benefits of a regional approach to ocean
management and planning, it also recognizes that differences in priorities, problems, and ecosystems exist
across different areas of the country. In the Northeast, for example, plans aim to resolve conflicts between
future offshore-wind-energy development and existing fishing interests, while the Pacific Coasts
priorities will differ since offshore wind cannot be developed there at this time because of technological
limitations. Alaska has resisted implementing any of the principles of comprehensive ocean planning at
all, prompting sharp criticism from its congressional delegation of the draft implementation plan that
would have required regional planning bodies to be developed in all regions. Many Alaskans viewed this
imposition as top-down government meddling in what they consider to be state affairs.
Recognizing the need for each region to come to its own conclusions about how best to manage the areas
that it knows best, the final implementation plan stresses that regional ocean-planning efforts are
voluntary, not mandatory. States may choose to participate on regional planning bodies, reads the
final version, which goes on to say that, Should all states in a region not choose to participate a
regional planning body will not be established.
Even with these changes to the regional ocean-planning structure, the plan received a lukewarm
reception from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the newly minted ranking member of the Senate
Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard. During a hearing earlier this
week, Sen. Rubio expressed his concern about the plan, saying that, Too often the administration
puts forth voluntary documents like the National Ocean Policy that, when all is said and done,
were faced with a new regulatory regime with questionable value and severe economic
consequences.

Bipartisan Support for Ocean Policy

Ocean policy has bipartisan support
Ocean Conservancy 12
[Ocean Conservancy: The Blog Aquatic, 11/3/12, Nobody Benefits From Politicizing The Ocean,
http://blog.oceanconservancy.org/2012/11/03/nobody-benefits-from-politicizing-the-ocean/, accessed
7/7/14, GNL]
This week, the Washington Post examined the fervent bullying faced by the National Ocean Policy over
the course of this election year and its role as a battleground for polarized election-year fights. Critics
attempted to block funding for its implementation, claiming the policy served as an executive power
grab, lacking in stakeholder involvement and increasing in bureaucratic red tape. However,
blocking implementation of the National Ocean Policy could restrict agencies already struggling to
maintain services vital to the health of our coastal communities, and will exacerbate conflicts
between interests competing for space in our nations waters.
Its worth noting that supporting the ocean through a stronger and more effective ocean policy has
historically attracted bipartisan support . In 2004 President George W. Bush released the U.S. Ocean
Action Plan recognizing the challenge in developing management strategies for our coastal and ocean
waters, and expressed the need for systematic coordination. And under Mitt Romney, Massachusetts
pioneered legislation to create a comprehensive planning process for state ocean waters. Romney
declared: Our ocean waters are vulnerable to unplanned development. We want to avoid a Wild
West shootout, where projects are permitted on a first come, first served basis. With this insight
and by engaging stakeholders from all sectors and various levels of government, Massachusetts created
simple and effective solutions to balance competing interests and allow business to move forward.
Failing to implement a coordinated, science-based, participatory ocean policy hinders maritime
industries and unnecessarily risks the health of our marine environment and coastal communities.
Energy developers, port authorities, fishermen, shippers, our armed forces and members of both political
parties all recognize this.

Bipartisan Support for Ocean Conservation

Capitol Hill Ocean Week proves there is push for ocean conservation
Milutinovi, Postdoctoral Researcher Department of Earth and Environmental
Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, 14
[Svetlana, 6-24-14, The Hill, Oceans of problems, oceans of opportunities, ,
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/210255-oceans-of-problems-oceans-ofopportunities, accessed 7-8-14, AKS, CHOW: Capitol Hill ocean week]
It is estimated that 20 percent of all wild marine fish caught in the world comes from illegal fishing
operations, which are often connected to other illegal activities (trafficking of drugs, weapons and
people). A disturbing illustration of the degree of ocean pollution came from Sen. Sheldon
Whitehouse, who noted that top ocean predators are so loaded with toxins that dumping their
carcasses along the coastline would be in violation of the national anti-pollution laws! The Great
Pacific Garbage Patch, swirling with pieces of plastics that are now entering food web, potentially
harming human seafood consumers too, is yet another example of how we treat the ocean as a dump.
Climate change is a particular threat to oceans. Species that used to be concentrated in the Californian
seas are now looking for refuge in cooler waters off the coast of Pacific Northwest. The warming ocean
water expands and gains volume from melting ice on land, which has led many coastal communities to
experience more frequent flooding and even permanent loss of land and its cultural heritage. Shellfish
producers are acutely aware of the risks brought by the increasingly sour oceans. Many other organisms
can also be harmed by ocean acidification and this damage can climb up the food chains all the way to
humans.
As Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell put it in her address to the CHOW audience: the problems
are complex, but can be made less complex if we all join forces in tackling them. If everyone
contributes to making a positive change, we have a good reason to believe in a better future for
oceans and for us. Societies that fail to recognize that humans are part of the natural environment
expose themselves to a risk of downfall.

Sen. Begich (D-AK) Supports Ocean Development

Begich is a key leader for Oceans Policy Chair of Commerce Oceans
Subcommittee
Ocean Leadership Consortium, ocean research organization, 11
(9/13/11, Ocean Leadership Consortium, Bipartisan Group of Senators Announce Formation of Oceans
Caucus, http://oceanleadership.org/bipartisan-group-of-senators-announce-formation-of-oceans-caucus/
accessed 7/9/2014, KS)
Washington, DC With our oceans and coastal resources, and the economies and jobs they support,
facing constant and increasingly direct pressure from a variety of sources, a bipartisan group of
U.S. Senators today met to form a new Senate Oceans Caucus. The Caucus will work to increase
awareness and find common ground in responding to issues facing the oceans and coasts, which
support millions of jobs in America and contribute more to the countrys GDP than the entire farm sector,
grossing more than $230 billion in 2004.
Following todays inaugural meeting, the members announced that U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse
(D-RI) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) will serve as Caucus Co-Chairs. Senators Mark Begich (D-AK)
and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), as Chair and Ranking Member of the Commerce Subcommittee on
Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard, will serve as Honorary Co-Chairs of the Senate
Oceans Caucus to promote effective coordination with the subcommittee. Other Caucus members are
Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Scott Brown (R-MA), Maria
Cantwell (D-WA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tom Carper (D-DE), Chris Coons (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (RSC), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), John Kerry (D-MA), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Ron
Wyden (D-OR).
Im honored to join my colleagues today to announce the formation of the Senate Oceans Caucus, said
Senator Whitehouse. For coastal states like Rhode Island, our oceans are a vital part of our economy and
our history, and we must take smart steps to manage and protect them as a resource for future generations.
This Caucus will work together on a bipartisan basis to help make that happen.
I am proud to represent both the Pacific and Arctic Ocean interests as the Senate Oceans Caucus begins
our important work, said Senator Murkowski. To Alaskans, our vast coastlines connect us to our farms
and our factories for growth whether its our bountiful fisheries or resource opportunities. To an
outlying state like Alaska, its also our interstate highway system for shipping, tourism and commerce. We
must make bipartisan decisions today to guard them as they help feed our future growth.
During todays meeting the senators adopted a founding charter which lays out the principles for the
Caucus, and specifically discussed the following issues: international and domestic fisheries policy,
gaps in ocean science, and challenges to ocean and coastal resource management.
The oceans drive Alaskas economy though commercial, recreational and subsistence fishing, tourism
and international commerce, said Senator Begich. I welcome the formation of this caucus and its
bipartisan approach to dealing with the many challenges and opportunities of our oceans. As chair

of the Oceans and Fish subcommittee I am pleased to see the Senate focus on this important
resource that impacts every single one of us, and people around the globe.

Sen. Carper (D-DE) Supports Ocean Development

Carper supports iron fertilization
Pacella, DelmarvaNow, 6/13/2014
[Rachael, 6/13/14, Delmarva Now, Sea Grant updates Carper on coastal projects,
http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/local/delaware/2014/06/13/coastal-projects/10489309/,
accessed 7/9/2014, KS]
Assistant professor of Oceanography Matthew Oliver presented some work on carbon export, or the
movement of carbon from the atmosphere into the ocean, in the South Sea. First of their kind floats
are used to look at phytoplankton blooms when Iron 2 is added to the water it completes the
cycle the phytoplankton need to get carbon out of the atmosphere.
"How that system works will be very important in the next 100 to 200 years," Oliver said. "The question
is, once you put that in, what is the future of the carbon?"
The idea is when the phytoplankton die they sink to the deep ocean, where the carbon can be locked
away for 2,000 3,000 years, Oliver said. If that really happens, and if so what the effects may be,
still need to be considered.
"My initial reaction is that could be huge," Carper said.
Carper supports research-Sea Grant College Program Proves

Pacella, DelmarvaNow reporter, 6/13/14
[Rachael, 6/13/14, Delmarva Now, Sea Grant updates Carper on coastal projects,
http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/local/delaware/2014/06/13/coastal-projects/10489309/,
accessed 7/9/2014, KS]
Officials from the Delaware Sea Grant College Program and the University of Delaware updated
Sen. Tom Carper about on-going research projects taking place at the campus in Lewes and beyond
during a meeting June 13.
Professors, Delaware Sea Grant assistant director Jim Falk and Nancy Targett, dean of the College of
Earth, Ocean, and Environment, used the 45-minute meeting to briefly summarize more than half a
dozen projects for Carper, giving him knowledge he can use later when advocating for the Sea
Grant program.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Sea Grant College Program is
comprised of 33 university based programs, like Delaware's, and receives about $65 million in federal
funding each year, Falk said. Delaware gets about $1.3 million of that each year, and that number has
stayed fairly flat despite difficult financial times, Falk said.

Many people in Delaware have no idea about the research taking place in Lewes, Carper said, and
being able to demonstrate the relevance of the work to the country is vital.
"I've been in here a number of time; each time I leave feeling fascinated and almost in a state
disbelief that we can achieve this level of technology," Carper said. "Generations to come will be
very grateful."
Carper supports green regulation and innovation policies

Ocean Champions, political ocean organization, 12
(9/11/12, Ocean Champions, Ocean Champions Endorses Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) Clean Energy
Leader Fights for Green Jobs, http://www.oceanchampions.org/pdfs/CarperPR.pdf, p. 1-2, accessed
7/9/2014, KS)
Throughout his political career, Senator Carper has been a leader on clean energy development
and watershed conservation, said Mike Dunmyer, Ocean Champions Executive Director. He knows
and has proven that it is possible to pursue policies that protect the environment while also creating
new jobs and strengthening the economy.
As Delawares Governor, Carper enacted the Inland Bays Watershed Enhancement Act to restore
and protect critical habitat in Southeastern Delaware. He did this while balancing the states budget
every year, lowering taxes in seven of his eight years and driving major job growth. As Senator, he
ascended to Chair the Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, where he has championed
offshore wind energy development and positioned Delaware to be a leader in this technology, which has
the capacity to create thousands of new jobs. As the Founder and Co-Chair of the Senate Recycling
Caucus, he helped pass a bill to increase Americas recycling capacity while creating new green
jobs. He has also introduced legislation to restore and protect the Delaware River Basin.
In addition to his leadership on clean energy, Senator Carper has also defended the Clean Air Act
and the EPAs ability to regulate harmful pollutants. He has seen these efforts repeatedly provide
major public benefits in terms of reduced health care costs, lives saved and green jobs. He also knows
that with increasingly common extreme weather causing droughts for Delaware farmers and driving
violent storms toward its coasts, climate change is a real threat that must be addressed by innovating
away from reliance on fossil fuels.
I am grateful and humbled to be recognized for my work to protect our environment, particularly
our oceans, and foster the development of new, clean American energy sources - like offshore wind that create good-paying, sustainable jobs, both in Delaware and across the country, said Sen. Tom Carper
(D-Del.) Many people like to claim that we must choose between a clean environment and job
growth. I disagree. As one of the founding members of the Senate Oceans Caucus and chair of the
Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, I have seen firsthand the positive outcomes that stem from
keeping stewardship of our natural environment in mind as we help create a nurturing economic
environment for creating jobs and growing our economy. This is certainly true in Delaware, where
today our world-class, clean beaches are a major driver of our local economy and where we hope one day

in the near future to harness the wind to power our homes and businesses. I deeply appreciate this
endorsement and I will continue to advocate for growing our economy by protecting our environment.

Sen. Hagan (D-NC) Supports Ocean Development

Hagan supports ocean research Beaufort lab proves
JD News, 6/10/14
[6/10/14, JD News, Hagan protects Beaufort NOAA, labhttp://www.jdnews.com/jdnewstream/haganprotects-beaufort-noaa-lab-1.331081, accessed 7/9/2014, KS]
Washington, D.C. Today, U.S. Senator Kay Hagan announced that after she sent a letter to Senate
Appropriations Committee leaders, the committee rejected an effort to close the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) lab in Beaufort, North Carolina. Hagan has strongly
opposed closing the lab, and in April, she sent a letter to Appropriations Committee leaders urging
the committee to reject the portion of the Presidents fiscal year 2015 proposal that would close the
NOAA Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research, which supports 100 jobs in Carteret
County.
The NOAA Lab in Beaufort is a critical research facility employing approximately 100 people,
including world-renowned scientists, and provides important collaborative educational partnerships
between the federal government and top universities in North Carolina, said Senator Hagan. I am
committed to protecting this facility and Carteret County jobs, and the bill passed by the Senate
Appropriations Committee this week brings us one step closer to keeping the NOAA Lab in Beaufort
open for business.

Sen. King (I-ME) Supports Ocean Policy

Sen. King (I-ME) is on the front lines for renewables and ocean policy
Dunmyer, Ocean Champions Executive Director, 12
[Mike, 9-21-12, Ocean Champions, Ocean Champions Endorses Angus King (I-ME) for Senate Former
Governor Believes in Big Steps with Small (Carbon) Footprints,
https://www.oceanchampions.org/pdfs/KingPR_000.pdf, accessed 7-9-14, AKS]
Washington, D.C. September 21, 2012 Ocean Champions, which works to build political power
for the oceans by helping to elect pro-ocean candidates to the U.S. Congress, proudly endorses
Angus King for Maines open Senate seat.
As a wind power business owner, Governor King has been on the front lines of renewable energy
development, said David Wilmot, Ocean Champions President and Co-Founder. Were excited that
hell bring that passion for sustainability through technology and innovation to the Senate.
With his long history in the clean tech sector, King brings a commitment to sustainable energy, both
as a means of addressing ocean acidification and climate change, and as a platform for economic
growth.
King also sees the Gulf of Maine as one of our most important resources and believes it must be managed
to preserve its beauty and productivity for generations to come. Maines commercial fishing industry is an
important economic engine for the state, and protecting those jobs requires sustainable management of
Maines fisheries. Here again, King would see an opportunity for technology to help fishermen improve
the management of the fishery.
"The oceans are important to our environment, a significant aspect of Maine's culture and heritage,
and support a substantial portion of our economy, said Governor King. The Clean Air Act and Clean
Water Act championed by Sen. Ed Muskie have provided essential protections for our natural resources
for generations. If elected as the next US Senator from Maine I would be honored to continue Maines
legacy as a leader in this important work."
Sen. King (I-ME) can caucus on either side-allowing him to pass more policy by
switching to the majority
OKeefe, Washington Post congressional reporter, 14
[Ed, 4-10-14, The Washington Post, Angus King suggests he may caucus with GOP if it retakes Senate,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/04/10/angus-king-suggests-he-may-caucuswith-gop-if-it-retakes-senate/, accessed 7-9-14, AKS]

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), one of two independent senators who caucuses with Democrats, on
Wednesday openly floated the possibility of siding with Republicans next year if they take control of
the Senate.
Ill make my decision at the time based on what I think is best for Maine, King told The Hill on
Wednesday. He was asked about a potential switch after voting with Republicans to block a Democraticbacked bill that would seek to ensure pay equity among men and women.
On Thursday, King's office issued a statement clarifying the senator's position: Sen. King only told The
Hill newspaper what hes always said that his guiding principle is, and always will be, to do what is
right for Maine. He's a proven consensus builder and will continue to work with members on both sides of
the aisle, regardless of whos in charge. He believes the people of Maine sent him here to find solutions
and that's all he's focused on.
King is a former independent governor and ran for the Senate in 2012 as an independent. During his
campaign and in the years since, King has maintained that his current work with the Democratic
caucus does not bar him from one day possibly allying with Republicans.
I dont want to stand in the middle of the aisle and say Im an independent and not have a
committee assignment, he said in a 2012 interview with The Washington Post. Thats sort of selfdefeating, and it wouldnt be fair to Maine. If its necessary to join a caucus and get a committee
assignment, Ill do it.

Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) Supports Ocean Development

Murkowski is a key leader for ocean policies Chair of Senate Oceans Caucus
(9/13/11, Ocean Leadership Consortium,Bipartisan Group of Senators Announce Formation of Oceans
and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), as Chair and Ranking Member of the Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans,
Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard, will serve as Honorary Co-Chairs of the Senate Oceans Caucus
to promote effective coordination with the subcommittee. Other Caucus members are Daniel Akaka (DHI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Scott Brown (R-MA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA),
Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tom Carper (D-DE), Chris Coons (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Daniel Inouye
(D-HI), John Kerry (D-MA), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
Im honored to join my colleagues today to announce the formation of the Senate Oceans Caucus, said
Senator Whitehouse. For coastal states like Rhode Island, our oceans are a vital part of our economy and
our history, and we must take smart steps to manage and protect them as a resource for future generations.
This Caucus will work together on a bipartisan basis to help make that happen.
I am proud to represent both the Pacific and Arctic Ocean interests as the Senate Oceans Caucus
begins our important work, said Senator Murkowski. To Alaskans, our vast coastlines connect us
to our farms and our factories for growth whether its our bountiful fisheries or resource
opportunities. To an outlying state like Alaska, its also our interstate highway system for shipping,
tourism and commerce. We must make bipartisan decisions today to guard them as they help feed
our future growth.

Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) Supports Ocean Development

Whitehouse is a key leader for ocean policies Chair of Senate Oceans Caucus
(9/13/11, Ocean Leadership Consortium, Bipartisan Group of Senators Announce Formation of Oceans
and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), as Chair and Ranking Member of the Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans,
Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard, will serve as Honorary Co-Chairs of the Senate Oceans Caucus
to promote effective coordination with the subcommittee. Other Caucus members are Daniel Akaka (DHI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Scott Brown (R-MA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA),
Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tom Carper (D-DE), Chris Coons (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Daniel Inouye
(D-HI), John Kerry (D-MA), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
Im honored to join my colleagues today to announce the formation of the Senate Oceans Caucus,
said Senator Whitehouse. For coastal states like Rhode Island, our oceans are a vital part of our
economy and our history, and we must take smart steps to manage and protect them as a resource
for future generations. This Caucus will work together on a bipartisan basis to help make that
happen.
I am proud to represent both the Pacific and Arctic Ocean interests as the Senate Oceans Caucus begins
our important work, said Senator Murkowski. To Alaskans, our vast coastlines connect us to our farms
and our factories for growth whether its our bountiful fisheries or resource opportunities. To an
outlying state like Alaska, its also our interstate highway system for shipping, tourism and commerce. We
must make bipartisan decisions today to guard them as they help feed our future growth.
Whitehouse supports ocean sustainability policies

Ocean Champions, 12

(5-31/12, Oceans pac, Ocean Champions Endorses Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, OceansPAC,
http://www.oceanspac.com/news/ocean-champions, accessed 7-9-2014, KS)
As you know, Senator Whitehouses leadership extends across a range of ocean issues. He has
cosponsored bills to improve accountability and enforcement of illegal driftnet fishing and to
enhance penalties for violations of the Federal Clean Water Act. He has thrown his weight behind
the Trash Free Seas bill to address marine debris, and cosponsored an important bipartisan bill
to mitigate toxic algal blooms and dead zones.
Senator Whitehouse may be best known for leading the Senate passage of his National Endowment
for the Oceans Act (NEO), which would establish the first annual fund for ocean conservation
projects. NEO would utilize interest from the oil spill liability trust fund, clean water act penalties and
revenues from offshore energy development to direct millions of dollars toward projects that protect and
restore critical habitat, rebuild fisheries and drive research about critical ocean ecosystems.
Ocean Champions is a powerful voice in the fight to protect our oceans and coasts, and I'm honored to
have their endorsement, said Senator Whitehouse. As a Senator from the Ocean State, protecting our
great waters - and the coastal jobs they support - continues to be one of my top priorities, and I'll
keep standing with Ocean Champions and other organizations to advance our shared goals.
In a time of partisan extremism, Senator Whitehouse has looked for opportunities to work across the aisle.
He is a founding Chairman of the bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus, seeing it as a forum for
collaborating and building consensus on important ocean issues. In addition, the Senator has
partnered with senior Republicans like Senator Olympia Snowe to advance bills like the Harmful
Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Act, and his National Endowment for the Oceans Act.
Whitehouse is the greatest proponent of ocean policy-awards prove

(10/4/12, Ocean Leadership, Ocean Leadership Presents U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse with
Inaugural Admiral James D. Watkins Award, http://oceanleadership.org/ocean-leadership-presents-u-ssenator-sheldon-whitehouse-with-inaugural-admiral-james-d-watkins-award/, accessed 7/9/2014, KS)
The Admiral James D. Watkins award was created in honor of the late Admiral to recognize
outstanding contributions to ocean research and education. In the Awards inaugural year, Ocean
Leadership is honoring the cofounders of the Senate Oceans Caucus with the distinction. The first
awardee, Senator Whitehouse, has long been an ocean champion, fighting to understand, preserve
and safeguard the oceans. He helped establish the Senate Oceans Caucus; led the Senate effort to
establish a National Endowment for the Oceans; and helped pass the Estuary Restoration Act.
As a Senator for the Ocean State, its a particular honor to receive this award, said Senator Whitehouse.
Our state relies on our Bay and ocean for so much from fishing, to tourism, to boating, and soon,
we hope, wind energy. With all of that at stake, Ive been proud to continue the Rhode Island
tradition, set by Senators Claiborne Pell and John Chafee, of fighting to protect our coastal waters so

they can continue to enrich our lives by supporting a thriving ecosystem and all the jobs that come
with it.
In honor of the late Admiral James D. Watkins, Ocean Leadership created this award in his name to
commemorate his deep devotion and dedication to the ocean and to carry on his lifes quest to understand
and protect the sea, said Bob Gagosian, President & CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership.
Today, we are proud to present this award to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse in recognition of his
tremendous leadership in advancing marine science and conserving our nations ocean and coastal
resources. This is truly a national award for a national leader.
There were a series of afternoon events at the URI GSO to commemorate this special occasion: a lecture
by Bob Gagosian on Oceanography Amidst a Fiscal Cliff; a tour of the URI GSO Inner Space Center; and
the Admiral James D. Watkins award presentation and reception.
Senator Whitehouse has provided critical leadership in ocean-related issues that will have a
significant impact on the future of the oceans for years to come, said URI GSO Dean Bruce Corliss.
The Admiral James D. Watkins Award from the Consortium for Ocean Leadership is recognition of his
commitment and contributions to the stewardship of the oceans, and we were delighted to host this event
at the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.
About the Admiral James D. Watkins Award
This distinguished and meritorious award is named after Admiral James D. Watkins (1927-2012), who
dedicated his life to public service with extraordinary influence on the marine science community and
ocean policy. Watkins chaired the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (2001-2004), served as the Chief of
Naval Operations (1980-1986), Secretary of Energy (1989-1993), President of the Joint Oceanographic
Institutions (JOI) (1993-2000), founding President of the Consortium for Ocean Research and Education
(CORE) (1994-2001), and established the National Ocean Science Bowl competition in 1998.
The James D. Watkins Award is presented only when the highest standard of merit has been proven
and recognizes those who have distinguished themselves as champions of ocean science through
sponsorship of legislation, development of sound ocean policy, or promoting federal investment to
advance the field of oceanography.

Sen. Wyden (D-OR) Supports Ocean Policy

Sen. Wyden (D-OR) pushes for ocean policy
Oceana, largest Ocean advocacy group, 12
[Oceana, 8-3-12, New Sen. Wyden Bill Signals U.S. Support for International Action to Stop Foreign
Government Subsidies that Lead to Overfishing, http://oceana.org/en/news-media/press-center/pressreleases/new-sen-wyden-bill-signals-us-support-for-international-action-to-stop-foreign-government,
accessed 7-9-14, AKS]
WASHINGTON Late yesterday, United States Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a new bill
that signals U.S. support for international action to stop government subsidies that lead to
overfishing. Specifically, the Fair Trade in Seafood Act (S. 3518) would establish the issue as a Principal
Negotiating Objective of the U.S. in the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and World Trade
Organization (WTO) round talks.
Oceana, the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the worlds oceans, issued the
following statement of support from Corry Westbrook, federal policy director:
Oceana applauds Sen. Wyden for introducing this important legislation. This bill will send an
important message to our trading partners around the world by showing that stopping overfishing
subsidies is a U.S. trade priority.
As chair of the Senate Finance Committee-Wyden has much political clout

Davis, USA Today chief congressional reporter, 13
[Susan, 12-20-13, USA Today, Sen. Wyden in line to head powerful Finance Committee,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/12/20/wyden-finance-baucus/4142381/, accessed 7-914, AKS]
WASHINGTON President Obama's decision to tap Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus as the
next U.S. ambassador to China paves the way for Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden to take over one of
the most powerful congressional committees, with jurisdiction over the tax code, health care and
trade policy.
Wyden, 64, is best known recently for his role on the Intelligence committee as a forceful critic of broad
data gathering by U.S. intelligence agencies.
He was already expected to take over the Finance gavel in 2015, but it could occur sooner than expected
as Baucus will exit the Senate as soon as his nomination is confirmed by his colleagues.

Baucus had already announced he was not seeking re-election. The panel's second-ranking Democrat,
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is also retiring. Wyden is third ranking. Senate Democrats have
generally adhered to strict seniority rules in awarding chairmanships.
"The Senate Finance Committee has many important responsibilities which include promoting job
creation, ensuring competitiveness and stabilizing the nation's fiscal health," Wyden said in a
statement. "I also look forward to continuing my work on preserving the Medicare guarantee and
protecting retirement security, updating the nation's tax system with a focus on growth, fairness and
efficiency and ensuring that fiscal policy supports keeping jobs here in America."

Environmentalists Support Ocean Policy

Empirically environmentalists have supported ocean policies
Eilperin, The Boston Globe, White House editor, 12
(Juliet, 11-4-12, The Boston Globe, 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, accessed 7-12-14, CLF)
WASHINGTON Partisan battles are engulfing the nations ocean policy, showing that
polarization over environmental issues does not stop at the waters edge.
For years, ocean policy was the preserve of specialists. But President Obama created the first national
ocean policy, with a tiny White House staff, and 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 countrys 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.
Obamas July 2010 executive order set up a National Ocean Council, based at the White House and
designed to reconcile competing interests of agencies and ocean users.
The policy is having an impact. The council is trying to broker 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 are having little success when invoking the ocean policy to press for federal limits on
traditional maritime interests. The Center for Biological Diversity cited the policy as reason to slow
vessels traveling through marine sanctuaries off California. Federal officials denied the petition.
During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on ocean policy last year, the panels top
Democrat, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Malden, said, Opposing ocean planning is
like opposing air traffic control.
Representative Steve Southerland, Republican of Florida, 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.
Taryn Tuss, spokeswoman for the White House Council for Environmental Quality, 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, she said.

Exploration

Exploration Spends Political Capital

Ocean exploration requires political capital and funding lack of oceans on
agenda in past years prove political backlash
Pegg, Environment News Service, 3
[J.R., 11/4/03, Environment News Service, U.S. Urged to Chart New Course for Ocean Research,
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2003/2003-11-04-10.asp, accessed 6/30/14, GNL]
The bottom of the ocean remains the Earth's least explored frontier and will remain so unless the United
States provides international leadership, scientists said today. How to provide that leadership is the focus
of a new report from the National Research Council, which recommends the U.S. government embark on
a new multi disciplinary program of ocean exploration.
The report says that the program would reap a slew of benefits by increasing the pace of discovery
of new species, ecosystems, energy sources, seafloor features, pharmaceutical products, and
artifacts, as well as improve understanding of the role oceans play in climate change.
"Improved knowledge of our oceans represents more than an academic interest," said Dr. John Orcutt,
deputy director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and chair of the committee that prepared the
report.
Congress, interested in the possibility of an international ocean exploration program, asked the
National Research Council - an arm of the National Academy of Sciences - to examine the feasibility
of such an effort.
The committee determined that the barriers to an international effort remain too high and
recommended that the Congress would be wise to first launch a U.S. program. "The United States
should lead by example," Orcutt said. rise
The remote reaches and depths of the ocean need exploring, the committee says. (Photo courtesy the
Ocean Drilling Program)
Such a program should include the participation of foreign nations and could serve as a model for others,
according to the report.
"Informal and bilateral agreements that are project specific would enjoy greatest chance of international
collaboration," Orcutt said.
Implementing the committee's proposal would cost some $270 million in the first year, and about
$100 million in annual appropriations thereafter.
These funds include a dedicated flagship and a fleet of manned submersibles capable of diving to at least
6,500 meters and unmanned submersibles designed to reach depths of 7,000 meters or more.
The panel also recommended that the program include additional autonomous underwater vehicles that
are programmed to travel a specific route, collecting information along the way with sensors and cameras.

"Currently available submersibles - whether manned, remotely operated, or autonomous - cannot reach
the deepest parts of the sea," said committee vice chair Shirley Pomponi, vice president and director of
research at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.
Orcutt told reporters that the committee determined that much of the oceanographic work currently
conducted "reinvestigates previously visited locations."
"We tend to go to places where we have been before," he said. "If we are to understand the global oceans,
it is necessary to go beyond that and go into this exploration mode."
The oceans cover 70 percent of the planet but vast portions have not been "systematically examined for
geological or biological characteristics," he said, noting in particular a lack of exploration of the oceans of
the Southern Hemisphere.
A multidisciplinary ocean exploration program could buck that trend, the panel says, and could overcome
the discipline based character of the U.S. funding bureaucracy. Federal grants tend to be allocated to
chemists, biologists, or physical scientists, rather than to teams of researchers representing a variety of
scientific fields.
The report recommends that the program focus on a range of key issues, including biodiversity, the
oceans of the Southern Hemisphere, deep sea archaeology and the influence of deep ocean water on
climate change.
The committee suggests that a nonfederal contractor should operate the program, citing the benefits of
creativity, cost savings and performance incentives that can arise from competitive bidding.
But who should oversee the program is a tricky question.
The panel says the National Oceanographic Partnership Program, an existing collaboration of 14
agencies, would be the most appropriate part of the U.S. government to house the program, yet it
notes that Congress would need to revise the partnership program's charter so it can receive direct
and substantial appropriations of federal funds.
If this funding issue is not resolved, the committee said, the ocean exploration program could be
sponsored by the National Science Foundation or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
reef
There is no question that finding the funding - and political capital - to launch the kind of program
outlined by the committee will not be easy.
But Representative Jim Greenwood, a Pennsylvania Republican, believes that pressure is growing for
Congress to act.
"We think it is time to do something big and bold," said Greenwood.
The National Research Council report - along with the Pew Oceans Commission report released last June
and the pending release of the U.S. Oceans Commission report - is creating a "perfect storm of
knowledge," Greenwood said.
"We are trying to put the oceans on the political agenda," added Representative Sam Farr, a
California Democrat.

The report noted that humans have spent more time on the surface of the moon than exploring the deepest
reaches of the ocean - a point Farr picked up on.
"We may have to find some money in the NASA budget to help the oceans budget," Farr said.
Supporters in Congress for the program hope that recent discoveries of previously unknown species
and deep sea biological and chemical processes have heightened interest in ocean exploration.
Explaining how these discoveries could benefit mankind is key, the panel said, and education and
public outreach need to be an integral part of the ocean exploration program.
"This [program] could catch the imagination of the American people," said Greenwood, who plans to
lobby the White House to embrace the program.

Exploration Funding Controversial

Ocean exploration funding sparks partisanship Endowment proves
Merwin, Ocean Conservancy Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning Director, 14
[Anne, May 16, 2014, Ocean Conservancy, Attack on National Ocean Policy Defeated; Lost Opportunity
to Create a National Endowment for the Ocean, http://blog.oceanconservancy.org/2014/05/16/attack-onnational-ocean-policy-defeated-lost-opportunity-to-create-a-national-endowment-for-the-ocean/, accessed
6/27/14 CK]
This week, after nearly 6 months of negotiation, a final deal was announced. Thanks to your help, the
threat to the National Ocean Policy was resoundingly rejected. Champions in the Senate and White
House heard you, and successfully negotiated to remove the Flores riderinserted by Rep. Bill
Flores who represents a landlocked district in central Texas from the final bill. If it had been
successful, this misguided attempted to undermine the National Ocean Policy would have
prohibited the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a key coastal and ocean management agency, from
coordinating with coastal states, other federal agencies and the public as they engage in smart ocean
planning. With this threat removed, the multiple states that are already working on smart ocean
planning can move forward unimpeded with the full cooperation and participation of the federal
government.
Unfortunately, the proposed new National Endowment for the Ocean was collateral damage in the
negotiations. It is frustrating and disappointing that despite strong public demand and the
recommendation of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, partisan politics derailed this
opportunity to create a permanent, sustainable fund for our oceans future. However, we appreciate
the Administration and Senates full-throated defense of the National Ocean Policy, and look forward to
working with them to advance ocean planning priorities.
Ocean exploration unpopular GOP has voted against every effort for
exploration so far
Madsen, North Pacific Fisheries Management Council chair, 12
(Stephanie, vice president of the Pacific Seafood Processors Association, Summer 2012, Pacific
Fisheries Review, National Ocean Policy: A New Bureaucracy That Could Compromise
Regional Fisheries Management,
http://www.pacificfisheriesreview.com/pfr_june12_story6.php, accessed 6/27/14, GNL)
The Administrations draft NOP Implementation Plan proposes 53 federal governmental actions
and nearly 300 milestones, with 158 of those milestones to be completed in 2012 or 2013. Congress is
cutting funding for most federal agencies and has not provided new funding for NOP
implementation, so where is the money coming from to fund these new activities? Commercial fishing

interests are concerned that money has been, and will be, diverted from under-funded core NOAA
Fisheries science and management programs to pay for a new bureaucracy and for new activities not
Proponents are well aware of the tenuous authority of the Administration to implement the NOP, yet they
move ahead without apparent concern. These same proponents, however, insisted previously that
Congressional action to create a national ocean policy was necessary. NOP proponents supported bills
introduced in the previous four Congresses that proposed a national ocean policy, as well as many
of the councils and committees subsequently established through Executive Order. None of the bills
introduced in successive Congresses passed. In fact, none passed either body of Congress.
Now, without Congressional authorization or dedicated appropriations, the Administration states that
funding to implement the NOP, including ocean zoning activities, will come from repurposing existing
resources. The commercial fishing industry does not support repurposing core NOAA Fisheries science
and management programs to establish a new oceans bureaucracy that at the very least creates duplicative
fisheries management authority. It is a hollow argument advanced to date by the Administration that
repurposing funds creates efficiencies when, at least in the case of fisheries management, it creates
confusing, overlapping jurisdictional lines and duplicates existing resource management processes.
In May, the House of Representatives voted to prohibit certain federal agencies, including NOAA,
from spending taxpayer dollars on the NOP, in large part, because Congress has not authorized
many of the activities contained in the NOP implementation plan . Hopefully, the Senate will act, as
well. The Administration could show good faith by not moving forward with establishing ocean zoning
bodies until either Congress acts to define their scope of authority or the Administration appropriately
limits their mandate.
The Pacific Northwest and Alaska fishing industry are proud of our progressive and innovative approach
to properly managing ocean resources. And we are proud of our collaborative working relationship with
state and federal fishery managers. We do not welcome that relationship being put at risk by
implementation of an NOP that is being rushed forward without regard for constituents concerns.
Funding unpopular cuts in the prove

Drs. McClain, Deep Sea News Editor & Dove, Georgia Aquarium Research Center
Research and Conservation Director, 12
[Craig, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center Assistant Director of Science, & Alistair, Al Dove is an
Australian marine biologist currently serving as Director of Research and Conservation at the Georgia
Aquarium Research Center in Atlanta, 10-16-12, Deep Sea News, We Need an Ocean NASA Now Pt.1,
http://deepseanews.com/2012/10/we-need-an-ocean-nasa-now-pt-1/, accessed 6-24-14, CK]
Our nation faces a pivotal moment in exploration of the oceans. The most remote regions of the deep
oceans should be more accessible now than ever due to engineering and technological advances. What
limits our exploration of the oceans is not imagination or technology but funding. We as a society
started to make a choice: to deprioritize ocean exploration and science.

In general, science in the U.S. is poorly funded; while the total number of dollars spent here is large, we
only rank 6th in world in the proportion of gross domestic product invested into research. The outlook
for ocean science is even bleaker. In many cases, funding of marine science and exploration,
especially for the deep sea, are at historical lows. In others, funding remains stagnant, despite
rising costs of equipment and personnel.
The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, a committee comprised of leading ocean scientists, policy
makers, and former U.S. secretaries and congressmen, gave the grade of D- to funding of ocean
science in the U.S. Recently the Obama Administration proposed to cut the National Undersea
Research Program (NURP) within NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
a move supported by the Senate. In NOAAs own words, NOAA determined that NURP was a
lower-priority function within its portfolio of research activities. Yet, NURP is one of the main
suppliers of funding and equipment for ocean exploration, including both submersibles at the
Hawaiian Underwater Research Laboratory and the underwater habitat Aquarius. This cut has
come despite an overall request for a 3.1% increase in funding for NOAA. Cutting NURP saves a
meager $4,000,000 or 1/10 of NOAAs budget and 1,675 times less than we spend on the Afghan war in
just one month.
One of the main reasons NOAA argues for cutting funding of NURP is that other avenues of
Federal funding for such activities might be pursued. However, other avenues are fading as
well. Some funding for ocean exploration is still available through NOAAs Ocean Exploration
Program. However, the Office of Ocean Exploration, the division that contains NURP, took the
second biggest cut of all programs (-16.5%) and is down 33% since 2009. Likewise, U.S. Naval
funding for basic research has also diminished.

Politics Link Turns Case

The aff puts the cart before the horse lack of public support undermines
exploration
Lang, Co-Founder OpenROV, 13
[David, OpenROV is an underwater vehicle company, 2013, Aquarium of the Pacific, Aquatic Forum,
From Exploration to Engagement,
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/oceanexploration2020/oe2020_report.pdf, page 36 accessed 6/29/14 CK]
The solutions to the challenging issues facing our oceans-global warming, acidification, over-fishingrequire the right combination of strong science, informed policy, and skilled engineering. However,
there is one challenge (indeed, the grandest ocean challenge) that doesnt fit that formula: public
engagement.
Solving the ocean challenges require an engaged and supportive public. A public that understands
what is at stake, and can draw a clear connection between ocean health and the health of their
families and communities. Unfortunately, the same tactics needed to address the pressing ocean
issues also work to cognitively erase that public connection with the ocean. The immensity of the
ocean and its corresponding challenges create a willful blindness among the public-its just too
overwhelming to comprehend, so people stop trying.
The most effective way to build an engaged and informed public is just the opposite. Instead of
highlighting the problems, we need now more than ever to use a positive approach to show whats
wonderful about our oceans. We need to strengthen the public connection through positive
association.
From a positive perspective, theres no better tactic than ocean exploration. It taps into everything
thats awe-inspiring about the ocean: its vastness, its mystery, its wonder. But it also taps into
everything thats awe-inspiring about our humanity: our curiosity, our ingenuity, our wonder.
Public engagement is the highest imperative-every other issue is derivative. People will only protect
and pursue something in their field of awareness. We need a direct emotional connection. Ocean
exploration gives us the power to tell that story.

Congressional Support for Ocean Exploration

Political will for ocean exploration makes it a win for Obama
Farr, US Representative for California, 10
[Sam, January 2010, Rep. Sam Farr, The Ocean And The Congress - Sea Technology Magazine,
http://www.farr.house.gov/index.php/commentary-92328/654-the-ocean-and-the-congress-seatechnology-magazine, accessed 6/30/14, GNL]
I believe that in the coming years, we'll look back at 2009 as a turning point for ocean management,
conservation and science. It may take some time to get the necessary programs and initiatives online, but
I believe a strong foundation is being established.
The year got off to a great start when President Obama, during his inauguration speech, vowed to
"restore science to its rightful place." Even better, he quickly followed through on that promise,
appointing prominent scientists to lead several key agencies: physicist Stephen Chu at the Department
of Energy; ecologist Jane Lubchenco at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and
geophysicist Marcia McNutt at the U.S. Geological Survey.
Congress has had some early successes capitalizing on this new mindset. We were able to inject
additional funding into basic research and other scientific programs through the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act. We also passed the Omnibus Public Lands Act, a package that
included a number of marine related bills.
Key ocean-related legislation included in the package of bills was the Coastal and Estuarine Land
Conservation Program Act; the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act; the Ocean and
Coastal Mapping Integration Act; the Integrated Coastal and Ocean Observation System Act; the NOAA
Ocean Exploration and Undersea Research Act; and a bill I introduced, the Ocean Research and
Exploration Enhancement Act, which establishes two important ocean research programs: the National
Undersea Research Program and the National Ocean Exploration Program
Many other ocean-related bills are receiving attention in both the House and Senate, including measures
to restrict illegal fishing and shark finning; protect coral reefs; promote environmental education; and
fund research to understand harmful algal blooms. The House has also passed the STEM Education
Coordination Act, which would make advances in the coordination of federal programs that
support science, technology, engineering and math education.
But as we've seen over the past few months, these individual efforts have been overshadowed by larger
debates consuming public opinion and congressional floor time, namely health care and climate change.
But not all the obstacles we've faced this year in our efforts to reform ocean policy have been setbacks.
Just as my own reform efforts began to pick up traction in Congress, the White House weighed in
by creating a Presidential Ocean Policy Task Force, made up of the heads of several agencies with
jurisdiction over ocean issues and headed up by the White House Council on Environmental
Quality.

The president asked the task force to recommend a national ocean policy and a strategy for incorporating
marine spatial planning into our activities regarding the ocean. He also requested a framework within
which to implement both the national ocean policy and the marine spatial planning strategy.
These charges were intended to build on existing recommendations, including reports from the Pew
Ocean Commission and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. These reports, combined with my
own Oceans-21 legislation, provide a fairly comprehensive foundation on which President Obama
could develop his own platform.
That these actions were taken at all is a great step forward, but the fact that they were made so
early in his White House tenure is a clear signal that President Obama is serious about reforming
ocean policy.
By the time this column is printed, the task force should have already issued its final recommendations
for public comment. Thirty days later, in early January, the final recommendations are scheduled to be
submitted to the president.
Everyone in the ocean policy community is hopeful that President Obama will act quickly to make those
recommendations official. But administrative action by itself isn't enough. In Congress, we are working
to develop legislation to compliment whatever those executive actions may be. One thing is for sure:
there will be components in need of legislative reinforcement and gaps that can only be addressed
by Congress.
I believe Oceans-21, which I have written about here in the past, will fill many of those gaps. As drafted,
H.R. 21 accomplishes many of the goals the task force suggested in its interim report. Oceans-21
establishes a national ocean policy, strengthens NOAA and creates both national and regional governance
structures, comprising federal and state participants..
So the next steps for comprehensive reform are largely dependent on how the administration applies the
recommendations from the task force and how Congress moves to complement the White House.
What I do believe has already become clear is that the political will to enact these changes has reached
a saturation point. We have leaders in the White House and federal agencies and the desire in
Congress to ensure that the manner in which we treat the ocean promotes its long-term
sustainability for future generations.
How we manage the ocean has always been a delicate balancing act. I think it's long past time we readjust
that balance and move toward responsible management practices

Public Support for Exploration Funding

US is behind on funding of ocean research on the global scale support from US
citizens to raise funding for research now
Drs. McClain, Deep Sea News Editor & Dove, Georgia Aquarium Research Center
Research and Conservation Director, 12
[Craig, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center Assistant Director of Science, & Alistair, Al Dove is an
Australian marine biologist currently serving as Director of Research and Conservation at the Georgia
Aquarium Research Center in Atlanta, 10-16-12, Deep Sea News, We Need an Ocean NASA Now Pt.1,
http://deepseanews.com/2012/10/we-need-an-ocean-nasa-now-pt-1/, accessed 6-24-14, GNL]
The situation in the U.S. contrasts greatly with other countries. The budget for the Japanese Agency for
Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) continues to increase , although much less so in recent years. The
2007 operating budget for the smaller JAMSTEC was $527 million, over $100 million dollars more than
the 2013 proposed NOAA budget. Likewise, China is increasing funding to ocean science over the next five
years and has recently succeeded in building a new deep-sea research and exploration submersible, the
Jiaolong. The only deep submersible still operating in the US is the DSV Alvin, originally built in 1968.
85% of Americans express concerns about stagnant research funding and 77% feel we are losing our edge
in science. So how did we get here? Part of the answer lies in how ocean science and exploration fit into
the US federal science funding scene.

Environment Policy

GOP Opposition
Environmental policies are extremely partisan little GOP support
Dunlap, Gallup Scholar for the Environment, 8
[Riley E., Regents Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University and Gallup Scholar for the
Environment with Gallup, 5/29/8, Gallup, Climate-Change Views: Republican-Democratic Gaps Expand
Sharp divergence on whether the effects of global warming are yet
evident,http://www.gallup.com/poll/107569/climatechange-views-republicandemocratic-gapsexpand.aspx, accessed 7/7/14, GNL]
PRINCETON, NJ -- Historically, support for environmental protection in the United States has been
relatively nonpartisan. Republicans pointed with pride to Theodore Roosevelt's crucial role in
promoting the conservation of natural resources by establishing national parks and forests, and Democrats
applauded Franklin Delano Roosevelt's efforts to include conservation as part of the "New Deal" via the
Soil Conservation Service and related programs. Especially notable was how Richard Nixon
collaborated with a Democratic Congress by signing several of our nation's most important pieces
of environmental legislation into law in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The situation began to change in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration labeled environmental
regulations a burden that needed to be eased. While a temporary backlash from environmentalists and
much of the public resulted, Republicans nonetheless enjoyed a good deal of electoral success in arguing
that "government is the problem, not the solution." This theme has been amplified in passing decades,
and one consequence has been a growing partisan divide over environmental protection (and other
government programs).
The divide was most noticeable among political elites, such as members of Congress, who tend to be
more ideologically polarized than is the general public. What had been a modest, but significant,
difference in Republican and Democratic levels of pro-environmental voting in Congress since 1970
became a noticeable gap after the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994.[i] In the
past decade, it has become a chasm in both the House and Senate, as reflected in recent voting
"scorecards" issued by the League of Conservation Voters.
Nonetheless, partisan differences in support for environmental protection among the general public
remained relatively modest. For example, from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, support for increased
spending on environmental protection by self-identified Democrats was typically only around 10 points
higher than for self-identified Republicans.[ii] The gap began to widen in the late 1990s, likely
reflecting voters' tendency to follow cues from party leaders and political pundits.
Nowhere is the partisan gap on environmental issues more apparent than on climate change.
Beginning in the 1990s, particularly in 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol calling for reduced CO2 emissions
was established, conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh began to critique both the evidence
for global warming and proposals for reducing carbon emissions. It would appear that the vigorous
conservative campaign against climate-change advocates (especially Al Gore) has contributed to
leaders of the Republican Party adopting a highly skeptical view of global warming.

Recent Gallup Poll results suggest that this skepticism among Republican and conservative elites has led
rank-and-file Republicans to follow suit, as currently there is a large gap between self-identified
Republicans and Democrats in terms of perceptions of global warming. The growing gap is apparent in
results from a decade of Gallup polling on the issue, including the results from this year's Gallup
Environment Poll, conducted March 6-9, 2008.

Environmental Protection Popular

Plan popular - measures to protect the earth are popular with the public
Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, 14
[Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, 2014, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies, Americans want government action to protect the environment,
http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/article/americans-want-government-action-toprotect-environment/, accessed 7/7/14, GNL]
As the country celebrates Earth Day (April 22), leaders in Washington DC should bear in mind that
majorities of Americans say a variety of environmental issues should be a high priority for the
president and Congress.
Our recent national survey found that over half of Americans say Washington DC should make
addressing water pollution (62%), developing sources of clean energy (61%), toxic waste (56%),
and air pollution (54%) a very high or high priority.
Nearly half also say the president and Congress should give high priority to the issues of damage to
the Earths ozone layer (46%), loss of tropical rain forests (45%), and global warming (44%).
The American public expects their representatives in Washington to take action to protect the
environment.

Climate Policy

Climate Change Issues Controversial

Climate debates spark partisanship
Dunlap, Gallup Scholar for the Environment, 8
[Riley E., Regents Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University and Gallup Scholar for the
Environment with Gallup, 5/29/8, Gallup, Climate-Change Views: Republican-Democratic Gaps Expand
Sharp divergence on whether the effects of global warming are yet
evident,http://www.gallup.com/poll/107569/climatechange-views-republicandemocratic-gapsexpand.aspx, accessed 7/7/14, GNL]
PRINCETON, NJ -- Historically, support for environmental protection in the United States has been
relatively nonpartisan. Republicans pointed with pride to Theodore Roosevelt's crucial role in
promoting the conservation of natural resources by establishing national parks and forests, and Democrats
applauded Franklin Delano Roosevelt's efforts to include conservation as part of the "New Deal" via the
Soil Conservation Service and related programs. Especially notable was how Richard Nixon collaborated
with a Democratic Congress by signing several of our nation's most important pieces of environmental
legislation into law in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The situation began to change in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration labeled environmental
regulations a burden that needed to be eased. While a temporary backlash from environmentalists and
much of the public resulted, Republicans nonetheless enjoyed a good deal of electoral success in arguing
that "government is the problem, not the solution." This theme has been amplified in passing decades,
and one consequence has been a growing partisan divide over environmental protection (and other
government programs).
The divide was most noticeable among political elites, such as members of Congress, who tend to be
more ideologically polarized than is the general public. What had been a modest, but significant,
difference in Republican and Democratic levels of pro-environmental voting in Congress since 1970
became a noticeable gap after the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994.[i] In the
past decade, it has become a chasm in both the House and Senate, as reflected in recent voting
"scorecards" issued by the League of Conservation Voters.
Nonetheless, partisan differences in support for environmental protection among the general public
remained relatively modest. For example, from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, support for increased
spending on environmental protection by self-identified Democrats was typically only around 10 points
higher than for self-identified Republicans.[ii] The gap began to widen in the late 1990s, likely
reflecting voters' tendency to follow cues from party leaders and political pundits.
Nowhere is the partisan gap on environmental issues more apparent than on climate change.
Beginning in the 1990s, particularly in 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol calling for reduced CO2 emissions
was established, conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh began to critique both the evidence
for global warming and proposals for reducing carbon emissions. It would appear that the vigorous
conservative campaign against climate-change advocates (especially Al Gore) has contributed to
leaders of the Republican Party adopting a highly skeptical view of global warming.

Recent Gallup Poll results suggest that this skepticism among Republican and conservative elites has led
rank-and-file Republicans to follow suit, as currently there is a large gap between self-identified
Republicans and Democrats in terms of perceptions of global warming. The growing gap is apparent in
results from a decade of Gallup polling on the issue, including the results from this year's Gallup
Environment Poll, conducted March 6-9, 2008.

Energy Policy

Energy Policy Spends Political Capital

Energy policy needs the cooperation of a wide range of interest groups ensures
political capital used to pass the plan
Malewitz, Stateline Energy and Environmental reporter, 13
(Jim, 6-24-13, The Pew: Stateline, Renewable energy incentives survive lobby attack,
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2013/06/24/renewable-energyincentives-survive-lobby-attack, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
Enacting energy standards requires cooperation from a broad array of interest groups
environmentalists, utilities, manufacturers, farmers and others. Once they are in place, those
stakeholders are reluctant to scrap them. The incentives also create a new lobby ready to play defense,
including solar or wind installers, manufacturers and other small business or landowners that benefit.
What's more, powerful utilities rarely push for repeals or the watering down mandates even if
they opposed the initial policy. Many would rather not change course after shifting resources toward
compliance. That mindset, said Smith, is one of his group's biggest obstacles.
Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, the nation's largest electric utility, for instance, publicly
opposed bills introduced in the Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature that would
eventually repeal the requirement that utilities generate 12.5 percent renewable energy by 2021.
Personally I support the renewable energy portfolio standard, he said last month, according to
the Charlotte Business Journal. He said the company would continue to back the law as long as it
keeps its cap on costs that utilities can pass on to consumers, a mechanism also attached to other
states' policies.
The legislation died in committee.

Ocean Energy Unpopular - Aesthetic

Ocean energy is unpopular no sufficient technology and ruins views
King, White House Chronicle columnist, 6/15/14
[Llewellyn, 6/15/14, Anchorage Daily News, Ocean power, the other renewable, is on its way,
http://www.adn.com/2014/06/15/3518753/ocean-power-the-other-renewable.html, accessed 7/7/14, GNL]
In the United States there are complex legal hurdles from activists, who worry that beaches could
be impaired and their recreational value diminished, to the fascinating challenge of who in
government is responsible for licensing this new use of the ocean. Contenders include the Department
of the Interior, the Navy, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, which controls the electric markets.
What about fishing? The states will want a say with their coastal commissions. What about offshore
shipping lanes and even recreational boating? The oceans are vast and they already are invaded by
drilling rigs, wind turbines and undersea military activity, to say nothing of traditional marine uses
like shipping, fishing and boating.
Yet, so far, the problems have been technological rather than governmental. The sea is a great
resource, but it is a hostile environment for mechanical and electrical equipment. At present, the
nascent ocean energy industry is still sorting through a galaxy of devices for making electricity from
ocean kinetic power. These show engineering imagination run riot -- gloriously so.
As many as 100 machines for harnessing the ocean are being developed around the world. They can be
described as gizmos, widgets, gadgets, devices, or dream machines.

Renewables

GOP Opposition
Republicans and powerful conservative councils against Renewable Energy
Malewitz, Stateline Energy and Environmental reporter, 13
(Jim, 6-24-13, The Pew: Stateline, Renewable energy incentives survive lobby attack,
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2013/06/24/renewable-energyincentives-survive-lobby-attack, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
For renewable energy supporters, this was supposed to be a year of statehouse setbacks.
States Cooling to Renewable Energy read the headline of a MarchWall Street Journal story reporting
that more than a dozen legislatures were weighing proposals to roll back or abolish mandates that utilities
purchase a certain amount of renewable energy. Mandates are in place in 29 states and Washington, D.C.
Opponents of the renewable energy requirements, which are credited with spurring wind and solar
investment across much of the country, said the policies violate free-market principles and ramp up
electricity costs. After the 2012 elections installed large Republican majorities in a number of states,
the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) joined ranks with prominent
libertarian groups in a nationwide anti-mandate blitz. Wind and solar advocates feared the worst.
So much for predictions. With most sessions now wrapped up or waning, renewable energy backers now
brim with triumph and relief as they eye a legislative scorecard tilting their way.
Republicans are opposed to renewablespassing bills to restrict industries

Martin, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 13
(Christopher, 4-23-13, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, U.S. States Turn Against Renewable Energy as Gas
Plunges, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-23/u-s-states-turn-against-renewable-energy-as-gasplunges.html, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
Republican Push
Hager is a Republican whose top campaign donors include Duke Energy and the Charlotte, North
Carolina-based utility owners Progress Energy (PGN) unit, according to the National Institute on
Money in State Politics, a Helena, Montana-based non-profit group. He expects the bill to pass
through the GOP-controlled legislature, and that Governor Pat McCrory, also a Republican, will
sign it.
Duke hasnt taken a position on the North Carolina bill, said Jeff Brooks, a spokesman who
confirmed the company has supported Alec.
Colorados state senate passed a bill April 16 that would increase the amount of energy utilities must get
from renewable sources, and also expands the definition to include non-renewable sources such as
methane produced from coal mining.

Connecticut is following a similar strategy, by including large hydroelectric plants in its definition
ofrenewable energy. That will help utilities meet the states goal of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020,
said Nick Culver, an analyst at New Energy Finance in New York.
Connecticut has thrown up the white flag on its ambitious renewable targets, and is now negotiating its
terms of surrender, Culver said. Instead of simply easing back targets, they intend to widen eligibility
criteria to include imported hydropower from Canada that would have been built regardless, which
amounts to pretty much the same thing.
Proposed Bills
Other states considering similar policies include Missouri, Ohio and Kansas. Thirty of the proposed bills
in those states were deemed significant, meaning they have the potential to affect demand for
renewable power, by the North Carolina Solar Center, a partnership between the Energy Department
and North Carolina State University that tracks such activity for the U.S. Energy Department.
Alecs Wynn said groups in six additional states are planning attacks on renewable-energy policies.
The wind and solar industries are beating back efforts to reduce demand with their own lobbying,
said Carrie Hitt, vice president of state affairs at the Washington-based Solar Energy Industry Association.
This is a deliberate campaign by conservative think-tanks, the Heartland Institute and Alec to
overturn renewable energy policy that threatens the fossil industry, Hitt said in an interview.
Hager = Bill Hager, Florida House Representative

Oil Lobby Opposition

Multiple powerful lobbies oppose renewables- overwhelms the few that support
Harder, Wall Street Journal energy reporter, 13
(Amy, 4/17/13, National Journal, Long List of Lobbies Oppose Renewable-Fuels Standard,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/house-energy-commerce-committee/long-list-of-lobbies-opposerenewablefuels-standard-20130417, Accessed 7/7/14, CLF)
Its hard to rival the diversity and sheer number of groups and companies with a vested interest in the
renewable-fuels standard, from food and livestock businesses to those in the environmental and energy
sectors.
No official coalition exists to reform or repeal the mandate, like the one in late 2011 that successfully
lobbied to allow $5 billion in annual corn-ethanol subsidies to expire. Our reasons for all agreeing the
corn-ethanol tax credit was a bad idea just didnt extend to the rest of the biofuels market, said Nathanael
Greene, director of the Natural Resources Defense Councils renewable-energy policy. NRDC has one of
the more nuanced stances, which is reflected in Waxmans still-evolving position. The group doesnt want
Congress to repeal the mandate, but its concerned about the carbon footprint of corn ethanol and would
prefer that the Environmental Protection Agency manage any reforms.
The American Petroleum Institute, the powerful lobby group for major oil companies, announced
in November that it was shifting its position from seeking to reform the policy to outright repeal. API
is urging lawmakers in the same direction as Friends of the Earth, one of the most left-leaning
environmental groups. Its website says the mandate should either be fixed or ditched. The American
Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents the refineries that blend the biofuels with
gasoline, has been one of the loudest critics of the standard, even before last years record drought
thrust the issue to the forefront.
One of the most powerful factions opposed to the standard is what lobbyists refer to as the
barnyard crowd: trade groups representing livestock interests such as the National Turkey
Federation, the National Pork Producers, the National Cattlemens Beef Association, the National
Chicken Council, and the Milk Producers Council. The concern expressed by these groupshigher
corn pricesis what gets certain Democrats to the table, such as Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., who
hears from poultry producers in his state. The National Restaurant Association and the Grocery
Manufacturers, which have a presence in all states and congressional districts, are also opposed to the
standard because of the use of corn.
The list of interests lobbying to maintain the mandate without changes is much shorter, led by trade
groups for the biofuels industry: the Renewable Fuels Association and Growth Energy. But this list also
includes one very important partyPresident Obama, whose home state of Illinois is a big ethanol
producer. Whether Obama will be willing to reform the policy remains to be seen, but for now, statements
from the Agriculture Department and EPA indicate that the administration remains firm in its support for
the renewable-fuels standard.

Oil lobbies are against renewables

Johnsen, Townhall Web Political Editor, 13
(Erika, 10-25-13, HotAir, Businesses circling the White House to lobby for/against the Renewable Fuel
Standard, http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/25/businesses-circling-the-white-house-to-lobbyforagainst-the-renewable-fuel-standard/, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
The relief with which some industries welcomed the news that the Environmental Protection Agency
is perhaps considering backing off somewhat from the onerous requirements of the Renewable Fuel
Standard was only equaled by the dismay with which it was met from ethanols impressively wellorganized and well-monied lobby. The EPA acknowledging the reality that even they and their expansive
bureaucratic powers cannot interminably cudgel the energy sector unworkable mandates is a rarity indeed,
and as they are still claiming that they have yet to make a final decision on the matter, its time for Come
One, Come All over at the White House. Via The Hill:
Officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have been busy meeting with chemical and
energy companies in recent days, ahead of the expected release of new biofuel standards.
A version of the yearly target that has been leaked to media outlets is a jobs killer, National
Biodiesel Board spokesman Ben Evans said in an emailed statement to The Hill.
On Thursday, the trade group and six biodiesel producers with plants across the country met with Obama
administration officials to plead their case.
Oil & nonrenewable energy lobbies hate solar and wind development pushing
legislation to restrict
Martin, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 13
More than half the U.S. states with laws requiring utilities to buy renewable energy are considering ways
to pare back those mandates after a plunge in natural gas prices brought on by technology that boosted
supply.
Sixteen of the 29 states with renewable portfolio standards are considering legislation that would
reduce the need for wind and solar power, according to researchers backed by the U.S. Energy
Department. North Carolina lawmakers may be among the first to move, followed
byColorado and Connecticut.
The efforts could benefit U.S. utilities such as Duke Energy Corp (DUK). and PG&E Corp (PCG).
as well as Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM)., the biggest U.S. oil producer, and Peabody Energy Corp

(BTU)., the largest U.S. coal mining company. Those companies contributed to at least one of the
lobby groups pushing the change, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, a Madison,
Wisconsin-based non-profit group. It would hurt wind turbine makerVestas Wind Systems A/S
(VWS) and First Solar Inc (FSLR)., which develops solar farms.
Were opposed to these mandates, and 2013 will be the most active year ever in terms of efforts to repeal
them, said Todd Wynn, task force director for energy of the American Legislative Exchange
Council, or Alec, a lobby group pushing for the change. Natural gas is a clean fuel, and regulators
and policy makers are seeing how its much more affordable than renewable energy.
Conference Discussion
President Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for the oil and gas industry,
along with the former governors of Colorado and New Mexico will speak about the issue today in New
York at a conference hosted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Hydraulic-fracturing technology opened aging reservoirs for natural gas drilling, driving prices down
about 72 percent from their record 2005 high. Thats making more expensive wind and solar power
projects harder for utility regulators to justify, according to Alec and its allies, which include theHeritage
Foundation in Washington.
The shale revolutions are not just having ramifactions politically and economicaly in the U.S. but also
around the world, said Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
In 17 years, not that far away, we could reach peak energy use. This is not generally accepted.
Threat to Wind
Killing support for renewable-energy policies threatens sales at companies from wind-turbine
makersGeneral Electric Co (GE). and Siemens AG (SIE) to SolarCity Corp. (SCTY), the San Mateo,
California-based rooftop energy developer.
The push at the state level replicates efforts in Washington. Opposition from Republican lawmakers
delayed the extension of a federal tax credit for wind power, prompting Vestas, the biggest turbine
maker after GE, to fire 10 percent of its workforce at two Colorado factories.
There havent been any outright repeals yet, but weve seen some watering-down, said Justin Barnes,
senior policy analyst at the North Carolina Solar Center. Activity against renewable portfolio
standards has been increasing in the past year . Their arguments are mostly on cost.
The Raleigh, North Carolina-based research group is supported by the Energy Department and operates
the DSIRE database of state incentives.
U.S. Renewables
Renewable energy unpopular massive oil lobbies

Martin, Bloomberg News, 13

[Christopher, 4-23-13, Bloomberg News, U.S. States Turn Against Renewable Energy as
Gas Plunges, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-23/u-s-states-turn-against-renewable-energyas-gas-plunges.html, accessed 7-6-14, AAZ]
U.S. investment in renewable power and energy efficiency fell 54 percent last year to $4.5 billion as
government support waned, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The level may slip again this
year if states dilute their requirements, which have pushed utilities to contract power from renewable
providers and scale-back use of coal- and natural gas-fired generation.
Alec wants to repeal state mandates, arguing that the free market is a better way to determine the most
cost-effective source of power, Wynn said. It typically drafts model legislation for state lawmakers to use
as a blueprint when drafting bills, including the Electricity Freedom Act, which was published in October.
The anti-renewable mandate effort is also fueled by the Heartland Institute, the lobby group thats
pushing to repeal clean-energy goals that it says increase power prices, cost jobs and do little to
improve the environment, according to Heartlands website. Officials from the organization werent
available for comment.
Renewables unpopular massive lobby backing and state rollback on renewable

energy policies
Martin, Bloomberg News reporter, 13
More than half the U.S. states with laws requiring utilities to buy renewable energy are considering
ways to pare back those mandates after a plunge in natural gas prices brought on by technology that
boosted supply.
Sixteen of the 29 states with renewable portfolio standards are considering legislation that would
reduce the need for wind and solar power, according to researchers backed by the U.S. Energy
Department. North Carolina lawmakers may be among the first to move, followed by Colorado and
Connecticut.
The efforts could benefit U.S. utilities such as Duke Energy Corp (DUK). and PG&E Corp (PCG).
as well as Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM)., the biggest U.S. oil producer, and Peabody Energy Corp
(BTU)., the largest U.S. coal mining company. Those companies contributed to at least one of the
lobby groups pushing the change , according to the Center for Media and Democracy, a Madison,
Wisconsin-based non-profit group. It would hurt wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS)
and First Solar Inc (FSLR)., which develops solar farms.

Were opposed to these mandates, and 2013 will be the most active year ever in terms of efforts to
repeal them, said Todd Wynn, task force director for energy of the American Legislative Exchange
Council, or Alec, a lobby group pushing for the change. Natural gas is a clean fuel, and regulators and
policy makers are seeing how its much more affordable than renewable energy.
Oil companies lobby hundreds of millions per year against renewables

Truitt, Hoosier Ag Today President, 14
[Gary, 4-15-14, Hoosier Ag Today, Oil Industry Spends Millions to Lobby Against Renewable Fuels,
http://www.hoosieragtoday.com/oil-industry-spends-millions-to-lobby-against-renewable-fuels/, accessed
7-9-14, AKS]
Americans United for Change Executive Director Caren Benjamin made the following statement as
Americans face the tax deadline today: In the last five years, the oil industry has invested $885
million on lobbying and campaign contributions, and been handsomely rewarded with a steady
gravy train of tax breaks totaling more than $20 billion since 2009. Thats better than a 2000
percent return on their investment. Unfortunately, most Americans cant afford to hire a lobbyist,
so they are stuck paying more while the oil companies get a free ride. To make matters worse, when
companies like Exxon Mobil shelter tens of billions of dollars in profits in offshore tax havens, the
average American taxpayer gets stuck with the tab.
U.S PIRG released a new report today finding that the average American taxpayer in 2013 would have to
shoulder an extra $1,259 in state and federal taxes to make up for the revenue lost due to the use of
offshore tax havens by wealthy individuals and corporations. Corporations like Exxon Mobil which has
booked $47 billion in profits offshore, putting it in the top ten of companies with the most cash
offshore. The oil giant maintains subsidiaries in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

Coal Lobby Opposition

The coal industry along with conservatives are heavily fighting renewables
Rosenthal et al., New York Times Editor, 14
(Andrew, Terry Tang (Deputy Editorial Page Editor), Robert B. Semple Jr. (Associate Editor), David
Firestone (Projects Editor, National Politics, the White House and Congress), Vikas Bajaj (Business,
International Economics), Philip M. Boffey (Science), Francis X. Clines, National Politics (Congress,
Campaign Finance), Lawrence Downes (Immigration, Veterans Issues), Carol Giacomo (Foreign Affairs),
Mira Kamdar (International Affairs), Juliet Lapidos (Culture), Eleanor Randolph (New York State,
Northeast Region, Media), Dorothy Samuels (Law, Civil Rights, National Affairs), Serge
Schmemann (International Affairs), Brent Staples, (Education, Criminal Justice, Economics), Masaru
Tamamoto (International Affairs), Teresa Tritch (Economic Issues, Tax Policy), Jesse Wegman (The
Supreme Court, Legal Affairs), 4-26-14, New York Times, The Koch Attack on Solar Energy,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-energy.html, accessed 7-714, CLF)
At long last, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have found a new tax
they can support. Naturally its a tax on something the country needs: solar energy panels.
For the last few months, the Kochs and other big polluters have been spending heavily to fight
incentives for renewable energy, which have been adopted by most states. They particularly dislike
state laws that allow homeowners with solar panels to sell power they dont need back to electric
utilities. So theyve been pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice,
hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive.
Oklahoma lawmakers recently approved such a surcharge at the behest of the American Legislative
Exchange Council, the conservative group that often dictates bills to Republican statehouses and
receives financing from the utility industry and fossil-fuel producers, including the Kochs. As The
Los Angeles Times reported recently, the Kochs and ALEC have made similar efforts in other states,
though they were beaten back by solar advocates in Kansas and the surtax was reduced to $5 a month in
Arizona.
But the Big Carbon advocates arent giving up. The same group is trying to repeal or freeze Ohios
requirement that 12.5 percent of the states electric power come from renewable sources like solar and
wind by 2025. Twenty-nine states have established similar standards that call for 10 percent or more
in renewable power. These states can now anticipate well-financed campaigns to eliminate these targets
or scale them back.
The coal producers motivation is clear: They see solar and wind energy as a long-term threat to
their businesses. That might seem distant at the moment, when nearly 40 percent of the nations
electricity is still generated by coal, and when less than 1 percent of power customers have solar
arrays. (It is slightly higher in California and Hawaii.) But given new regulations on power-plant
emissions of mercury and other pollutants, and the urgent need to reduce global warming emissions, the

future clearly lies with renewable energy. In 2013, 29 percent of newly installed generation capacity came
from solar, compared with 10 percent in 2012.

Lobbies Oppose Renewables

Even bipartisan renewable policies create backlash from lobbiesleads to political
fights
Cardwell, NYT Energy & Business Day Reporter, 14
[Diane, 5/28/14, The New York Times, A Pushback on Green Power ,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/business/energy-environment/a-pushback-on-greenpower.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0, accessed 7/6/14, AC]
As renewable energy production has surged in recent years, opponents of government policies that
have helped spur its growth have pushed to roll back those incentives and mandates in state after
state.
On Wednesday, they claimed their first victory, when Ohio lawmakers voted to freeze the phasingin of power that utilities must buy from renewable energy sources.
The bill, which passed the Ohio House of Representatives, 54 to 38, was expected to be signed
into law by Gov. John R. Kasich, who helped negotiate its final draft.
It stands in marked contrast to the broad consensus behind the original law in 2008, when it was
approved with virtually no opposition, and comes after considerable disagreement among lawmakers,
energy executives and public interest groups.
Opponents of the mandates argued, in part, that wind and solar power, whose costs have plunged in
recent years, should compete on their own with traditional fossil fuels. But the debate has taken on
a broader, more political tone as well, analysts say, with disagreements over the role of government,
the economic needs of the state and the debate over climate change.
It used to be that renewables was this Kumbaya, come-together moment for Republicans and
Democrats, said Michael E. Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at
Austin. The intellectual rhetoric around why you would want renewables has been lost and
replaced by partisanship.
Since 2013, more than a dozen states have taken up proposals to weaken or eliminate green energy
mandates and incentives, often helped by conservative and libertarian policy or advocacy groups
like the Heartland Institute, Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange
Council.
In Kansas, for example, lawmakers recently defeated a bill that would have phased out the states
renewable energy mandates, but its backers have vowed to propose it again.
Jay Apt, director of the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University, said the Ohio
battle was another skirmish in the question of whether we are committed to cleaning up pollution,

and people are divided. He added, Renewable portfolio standards and other mechanisms of pollution
control are not cost-free.
The Ohio bill freezes mandates that require utilities to gradually phase in the purchase of 25 percent of
their power from alternative sources, including wind, solar and emerging technologies like clean coal
production, by 2025. While the freeze is in effect for two years, a commission would study the issue.
At the federal level, alternative energy industries like solar and wind have pushed hard in recent years to
preserve important tax breaks that they say have helped spur new development and sharply increased the
supply of clean energy flowing into the grid.
But the demand for that energy has been largely propelled at the state level by mandates, known as
renewable portfolio standards, that generally set goals for utilities to increase the percentage of green
energy they include in the power they buy for their customers.
Roughly 30 states have the standards, which can range from modest voluntary goals like Indianas target
of 10 percent by 2025 to more aggressive requirements like Hawaiis, which aim for 40 percent by 2030,
according to the Department of Energy.
Energy markets are highly policy-driven, said Todd Foley, senior vice president of policy and
government relations at the American Council on Renewable Energy. When states and even the
federal government continually revisit these policies, it sends a signal of uncertainty. It chills
market and investment momentum.
In Ohio, where opponents of the mandate argued that it raised the price of electricity and supporters
worried about the loss of economic development and jobs, Mr. Kasich worked to broker the compromise
bill, said a spokesman for the governor.
We rejected the efforts by those whod like to kill renewable energy altogether, and instead were
moving forward in a balanced way that supports renewable energy while also preserving the economic
recovery thats created more than 250,000 jobs, the spokesman, Rob Nichols, said. Its not what
everyone wanted, which probably means we came down at the right spot.
Eli Miller, Americans for Prosperitys Ohio state director, backed by the billionaire industrialists David H.
and Charles G. Koch, called the proposed law a prudent step to re-examine standards that could be a
potential impediment to job creation and job growth here in the Buckeye State.
But Gabe Elsner, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a pro-renewables group that sees
efforts to weaken incentives and mandates as part of a campaign by utility and fossil fuel interests, said
the temporary halt could do away with the law entirely.
The fossil fuel and utility industry has been caught off guard by the rise of cheap, clean energy, and over
the past 18 months theyve responded in a really big way across the country, he said. Were seeing the
results of that campaign now in Ohio.
Renewable energy still represents a small fraction of the overall energy mix, reaching about 6 percent of
net generation in 2013, excluding hydropower, according to the United States Energy Information
Administration. But it is on the rise, representing 30 percent of power plant capacity added that year.
For renewable developers, the outlook is uncertain. Michael Speerschneider, chief permitting and
public policy officer for EverPower, which recently won approval to develop a 176-turbine project in

Ohio, said the ruling would make it more difficult to find a buyer for the power, dimming prospects for
doing business in the state.
We came to Ohio based on the policies that were in place, he said. Changing that now, freezing it, just
sends a message that says, Now, we dont want you here anymore.'

Lobbies Oppose Renewables Mandates

Lobbies oppose renewable mandates
Martin, Bloomberg BusinessWeek AP, 13
U.S. investment in renewable power and energy efficiency fell 54 percent last year to $4.5 billion as
government support waned , according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The level may slip again this
year if states dilute their requirements, which have pushed utilities to contract power from renewable
providers and scale-back use of coal- and natural gas-fired generation.
Alec wants to repeal state mandates, arguing that the free market is a better way to determine the most
cost-effective source of power, Wynn said. It typically drafts model legislation for state lawmakers to use
as a blueprint when drafting bills, including the Electricity Freedom Act, which was published in October.
The anti-renewable mandate effort is also fueled by the Heartland Institute, the lobby group thats
pushing to repeal clean-energy goals that it says increase power prices, cost jobs and do little to
improve the environment, according to Heartlands website. Officials from the organization werent
available for comment.

Media Magnifies Link

Because of fossil fuel interests, the media and the public perceives renewables badly
Gomberg, energy analyst and responsible energy policies expert, 14
(Sam, 5-5014, Union of Concerned Scientists, The Koch Brothers Cant Switch Off Renewable
Electricity, http://blog.ucsusa.org/renewable-electricity-standards-koch-brothers-516, accessed 7-7-14,
CLF)
The Union of Concerned Scientists works with a broad range of allies business and industry,
environmental and consumer advocates, and engaged citizens and experts to make sure decision
makers have the facts to see through the disinformation campaigns led by the Koch Brothers and
their cohorts and make well-informed decisions about the role of renewable energy in meeting
energy demand. We were among the first to exposethe Koch Brothers pending attack on RES policies in
2012 and to highlight the misleading claims, and often downright lies, spread by the fossil fuel lobby.
Campaigns of disinformation attracting attention and eroding the publics trust
Fossil fuel interests, led by the Koch Brothers and the organizations they fund, are carrying on a
campaign of disinformation to spread doubt about renewable energy and its potential to create a
clean, sustainable energy future for America.

Public Supports Renewables

People are enthusiastic about renewable energy
McLamb, Ecology Communications Group, Inc. Founder, CEO & President, 11
(Eric, 9-6-11, Ecology, Fossil Fuels vs. Renewable Energy Resources,
http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/06/fossil-fuels-renewable-energy-resources/, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
There is a great deal of information and enthusiasm today about the development and increased
production of our global energy needs from alternative energy sources. Solar energy, wind power
and moving water are all traditional sources of alternative energy that are making progress. The
enthusiasm everyone shares for these developments has in many ways created a sense of
complacency that our future energy demands will easily be met .
Alternative energy is an interesting concept when you think about it. In our global society, it simply
means energy that is produced from sources other than our primary energy supply: fossil fuels.
Coal, oil and natural gas are the three kinds of fossil fuels that we have mostly depended on for our
energy needs, from home heating and electricity to fuel for our automobiles and mass transportation.
The problem is fossil fuels are non-renewable. They are limited in supply and will one day be
depleted. There is no escaping this conclusion. Fossil fuels formed from plants and animals that lived
hundreds of millions of years ago and became buried way underneath the Earths surface where their
remains collectively transformed into the combustible materials we use for fuel.
In fact, the earliest known fossil fuel deposits are from the Cambrian Period about 500 million years ago,
way before the dinosaurs emerged onto the scene. This is when most of the major groups of animals first
appeared on Earth. The later fossil fuels which provide more substandard fuels like peat or lignite coal
(soft coal) began forming as late as five million years ago in the Pliocene Period. At our rate of
consumption, these fuels cannot occur fast enough to meet our current or future energy demands.
Despite the promise of alternative energy sources more appropriately called renewable energy,
collectively they provide only about 7 percent of the worlds energy needs (Source: Energy Information
Agency). This means that fossil fuels, along with nuclear energy a controversial, non-renewable
energy source are supplying 93 percent of the worlds energy resources.
Dams are a major source of hydroelectric energy, such as the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River
(pictured). While they collect the vast raw energy provided by water currents, they also create
environmental hazards such as silt buildup. They are also significant barriers to fish, such as the salmon
of the Pacific Northwest, which must migrate in order for the species to survive. The Hoover
Dam is a major source of energy for the southwestern US. (Photo: US Bureau of Reclamation)
Bipartisan public support for natural gas, solar, and wind energy is a thing
Jacobe, Gallup Politics Chief Economist, 13

(Dennis, 3-27-13, The Gallup, Americans Want More Emphasis on Solar, Wind, Natural Gas
Oil, nuclear, and coal are more popular with Republicans and in the South,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/161519/americans-emphasis-solar-wind-natural-gas.aspx, accessed 7-9-14,
CLF)
PRINCETON, NJ -- No fewer than two in three Americans want the U.S. to put more emphasis on
producing domestic energy using solar power (76%), wind (71%), and natural gas (65%). Far fewer
want to emphasize the production of oil (46%) and the use of nuclear power (37%). Least favored is
coal, with about one in three Americans wanting to prioritize its domestic production.
Democrats' and independents' top choice is solar power, while natural gas places first among
Republicans. Republicans and Democrats disagree most on the priority that should be given to oil as a
future energy source -- with 71% of Republicans wanting more emphasis placed on it, compared with
29% among Democrats. Republicans are also much more supportive than Democrats of coal (51% vs.
21%) and nuclear power (49% vs. 30%).
Where Americans live makes a difference in their views about which sources of domestic energy
they want the U.S. to emphasize more. Those living in the South tend to be more supportive of
traditional energy sources such as oil and coal than are those in other regions.
Still, for Americans in every region, including the South, solar power is the top choice, or is tied for
the top spot, among the energy sources tested.
Implications
The United States has a great opportunity to accelerate its economic growth over the next several
years by emphasizing and fully using its enormous energy riches to produce domestic energy. But
there has been no consensus among Americans about how to optimize domestic energy production while
preserving the environment.
Americans overall and across political and socioeconomic groups generally are most likely to call
for more emphasis on solar and wind power -- but these potential future sources of energy have a long
way to go in terms of technology and affordability before they can significantly affect overall U.S.
domestic energy production. On the other hand, Americans are sharply divided politically over achieving
greater domestic energy production using more traditional energy sources such as oil, coal, and nuclear
power.
This leaves natural gas, which 59% of Democrats, 62% of independents, and 79% of Republicans
say should have more emphasis in the U.S. The technology exists to allow natural gas to become a
more significant contributor to U.S. domestic energy production. But questions remain about the
safety of "fracking technology" -- meaning public support may not be enough to increase the U.S.
emphasis on this energy source.
((NOTE: Results for this poll are based on telephone interviews conducted March 7-10, 2013, with a
random sample of 1,022 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of
Columbia))

Populareveryone likes renewablesenvironmentalists, liberals, conservatives,

consumers, military folks and moderates
Fuel America, coalition of organizations protecting Americas Renewable Fuel
Standard, 13
(Fuel American, 6-26-13, Fuel America, POLL: Americans are tired of volatile gas prices, want more
renewable fuel, http://www.fuelsamerica.org/facts/entry/poll-americans-are-tired-of-volatile-gas-priceswant-more-renewable-fuel, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
Overwhelmingly, Americans think the nation should be using more renewable fuel (80%). Whats
more, they support the one policy, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), that is making that happen (73%).
What volatile gas prices mean for consumers
55% of consumers said that if gas prices go up, they would be likely to take fewer road trips to visit
friends and family
The new normal: unpredictable gas prices, brought to you by the oil industry
59% of consumers blame the oil industry for high gas prices
Consumers know they want less oil and more renewable fuel
75% of consumers want more renewable fuel options at gas stations
Environmentalists were even more critical of oil and even more supportive of renewable fuel
89% of environmentalists believe replacing oil with renewable fuel would benefit the environment
82% of environmentalists support the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) compared to 73% of the
nation
Renewable fuel is a boon to national security
69% of Americans believe that replacing oil imports with renewable fuel production is critical to
national security
87% of military households have a favorable opinion of the RFS compared to 80% of the nation
63% of people who are engaged in active military service or have served in the past blame oil
companies for high bas prices compared to 59% of the nation
Support for renewable fuel and the RFS is bipartisan
Liberals (83%), Moderates (76%), and Conservatives (60%) all support the Renewable Fuel
Standard
For more information, read our press release here.

Public Supports Solar

Solar is popular with the public across political parties
Handley, U.S. News & World Report mutual funds and investing reporter and
writer, 13
(Megan, 4-1-13, U.S. News & World Report, Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Alternative
Energy, http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/01/poll-americans-overwhelmingly-supportalternative-energy, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
Despite the nation's newfound abundance of fossil fuels thanks to the so-called "Shale Gale," Americans
still overwhelmingly support more development of alternative energy, according to a new poll.
Three-in-four Americans want the United States to pursue more solar energy according to
Gallup and another 71 percent favor further development of wind power. Far fewer prioritized the
expansion of oil production (46 percent) and nuclear expansion (37 percent), and less than one-third of
respondents supported ramping up coal production.
The survey found Americans' opinion on the nation's energy options varied by political affiliation, with
Democrats and independents championing solar power, while natural gas was the top choice for
Republicans. Almost 90 percent of Democrats and nearly 75 percent of independents polled
supported more solar power, compared to 68 percent among Republicans . More than two-thirds of
Republicans supported more development of the nation's natural gas resources, compared to just 62
percent among independents and 59 percent of Democrats.
Responses varied by geographic region as well. Those living in the South tend to support more traditional
energy sources, such as oil and coal, than those living in other regions of the country.
Nevertheless, more investment in solar was the top priority overall, regardless of where respondents
lived and Americans "overall and across political and socioeconomic groups generally are most likely to
call for more emphasis on solar and wind power," the Gallup survey noted. But alternative energy sources
are still in their infancy in terms of technology and affordability according to Gallup, which means they
have a long way to go before achieving more significant contributions to U.S. domestic energy
production.

Public Opposes Renewables

People dont like renewables too big, too ugly and unreliable
Kahya, BBC business reporter, 09
(Damian, 12-3-09, BBC News, Can we go 100% renewables,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8388669.stm, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
Only about a third of the energy we use comes in the form of electricity.
Transport and heating are also key.
The wind doesn't always blow
Renewable energy is often unreliable.
They include wind, hydro-electric, tidal, solar and wave and geothermal power along with energy from
plant and waste material - so-called biomass and bio-fuels.
The wind does not always blow so most wind-farms average 20-30% of their capacity.
The governments suggested 33 GW of offshore wind will generate just a third of that.
Tidal and hydroelectric power are more reliable, but hard to locate.
Professor MacKay estimates there are enough good spots for hydro-electric to provide 0.8% of our
current energy needs.
Tidal power has just one commercial turbine in the Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland.
Carbon Trust research suggests the technology could provide 0.6% of current energy use.
But the numbers are rough.
"We're roughly where aviation was in 1920s," says Peter Fraenkel, technical director for the company
behind the Strangford project, Marine Currents Turbines.
Finding the space
Space is also an issue for wind, solar and biofuels.
Installing just 33GW of offshore wind would need 10,000 square kilometres of coastal waters
generating only 3% of our current energy supply, Professor MacKay estimates.
It means that we would struggle to exceed 50% of our current needs from renewable energy, he
insists.
Social rejection
"People love renewable energy," according to Professor MacKay, "unless it is bigger than a fig-leaf".

Wind unpopular with public and positive public perceptions of renewables take a
too long to achieve
Gaur, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Consortium,
WorldFish, 12
(Sachin (WorldFish: international, non-profit research organization dedicated to reducing poverty and
hunger by improving fisheries and aquaculture), 10-22-12, The Fletcher School: Tufts Universtiy
(Graduate School of International Affairs), Public Perception Key to Wind Energy Projects,
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/CIERP/News/more/Oct22Petrova, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
The development of new sources of renewable energy is crucial in achieving energy security, and wind
energy is certainly one of them as wind turbines installed at various locations across the country are
gradually increasing their contribution to electricity generation. As these projects develop, it is
imperative to take local communities into consideration before starting new initiatives, as their
support is an integral component of successful projects.
Maria Petrova, a postdoctoral research fellow at CIERP, recently completed research on measuring the
perceptions among local communities about wind energy projects. In her presentation entitled Public
Perceptions of Wind Energy Projects in Massachusetts, Petrova shared results demonstrating that
communities tend to support such projects provided their benefits are explained to residents in a
timely and coherent manner.
Petrova did a survey to examine perceptions of wind energy projects that are being developed in
Massachusetts under the same legal and political framework. Three towns in the state were chosen:
Falmouth, Hull, and Kingston. These projects are sited in residential areas and possess similar
capacities, but they are at different stages of development and have different levels of community
acceptance.
Participation of local communities key to wind turbinesempirically localization of

the issue has been controversial
Gaur, CGIAR Consortium, WorldFish, 12
(Sachin (WorldFish: international, non-profit research organization dedicated to reducing poverty and
hunger by improving fisheries and aquaculture), 10-22-12, The Fletcher School:Tufts Universtiy
(Graduate School of International Affairs), Public Perception Key to Wind Energy Projects,
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/CIERP/News/more/Oct22Petrova, accessed 7-9-14, CLF)
The survey results showed that Massachusetts residents, in general, are supportive of wind energy
projects. In Hull, following the success of the first wind turbine, the local community decided to
install another turbine as they saw tangible results of the project. Both turbines now supply
electricity to 1,100 homes along with supply to traffic and street lights.

Petrova found that the community in Kingston started to implement the wind energy project as soon as
the renewable portfolio standard was adopted in 2002. After extensive consultations and hearings, the
town moved ahead with wind energy projects and now boasts five wind turbines both privately and
publicly owned.
In Falmouth, however, the enthusiasm over the turbine was marred by health fears and noise
concerns. Now the turbines in the area are operated only during the day. Community meetings are
regularly organized by the Consensus Building Institute, and both sides relay their concerns over
wind projects to try to find mutually acceptable solutions to the problem. When asked how the wind
turbines fit into the landscape, most respondents in Falmouth say that wind turbines create noise and are
intruders in their space. They also feel that wind projects have changed their life for the worse.
However, the residents in Hull believe that wind turbines are an attractive feature of the landscape
and their life has changed for the better. The same pattern of completely opposite responses is
further reflected in other research questions.
Petrova said that property values are a major cause of concern among residents, as property values may
drop following the installation of turbines. The survey shows that Falmouth residents do not think these
projects provide financial benefits to them or to the town, whereas the respondents in Hull see benefits
from these projects. From an environmental policy point of view, Falmouth residents are concerned
about negative effects of such projects on wildlife and their health.
How the residents get to know about these projects is also an important issue. People in Hull learned of
these projects during the planning phase; in Kingston, most respondents learned about them during the
construction phase; Falmouth residents were informed about these projects at a much later stage.
The residents become aware of such projects through town hall meetings, newspapers, and other
forms of media, and they acknowledge that receiving adequate information is critical for building public
opinion on wind turbine projects.
Human geography issues also determine how these projects are seen by residents. Do they see them as
intruders in their community? Socio-economic concerns tell us whether property values go up or down,
how such projects affect tourism, or if there are financial benefits to the community. Environmental
policy issues deal with wildlife concerns, health concerns, greenhouse gas emissions and the reduction on
oil dependence.
The increase in energy demand is largely driven by growing requirements for electricity as the world
population is expected to touch 9 billion by 2030. Earlier, OECD countries were driving the demand, but
with the rise of emerging economies, the demand for energy is now also coming from non-OECD
countries. In the face of mounting pressure on finite resources, renewable energy sources have huge
potential to help tackle resources constraints.
Natural gas contributes the most to electricity generation in Massachusetts and amounts to around 74%,
nuclear energy supplies 12%, coal power plants contribute up to 9%, and the share of renewable energy
sources (solar, wind, etc.) is around 4%. Massachusetts is one of the few states in the US that started
exploring the potential of renewable energy early. The ambitious plan is to generate 15% of electricity in
Massachusetts through wind energy by 2020.
To meet that goal, the participation of local communities is important in taking informed decisions
and making them stakeholders in renewable energy projects. Petrova said that if a project is presented

with all the relevant information, people are willing to assume ownership. If they see tangible benefits
coming to their community, they will make sure that it is done, which is the key to success.

Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) Supports Renewables

Senator Whitehouse supports renewables
Ziner, Providence Journal staff writer, 14
[Karen Lee, 7-6-14, Providence Journal, PolitiFact R.I. rules Sen. Whitehouse claim on solar, coal jobs
is True, http://www.providencejournal.com/politics/content/20140706-politifact-r.i.-rules-sen.whitehouse-claim-on-solar-coal-jobs-is-true.ece, accessed 7-8-14, AKS]
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- For more than a year, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has delivered weekly
Senate speeches about the dangers of climate change. He frequently denounces climate-change
deniers, and urges growth of green jobs and technologies to reduce Americas reliance on foreign
fossil fuel.
In a May 27, 2014 commentary in The Providence Journal, Whitehouse argued for a nationwide price
on carbon pollution. And he expressed hope for a prosperous, clean-energy future and faith that
there is more economic security in our own American know-how than in corrupt foreign fossil fuel
countries.
To that end, Whitehouse noted that there are already more American jobs in the solar industry
than in coal mining.

GOP Supports Renewables

Majority of Republicans support renewables Studies prove
Hower, Sustainable Brands, Associate Editor, 4-4-13
[Mike Hower, Triple Pundit, Contributor, 4-04-13, Triple Pundit, Ending the Debate: Most Republicans
Actually Support Increased Renewable Energy Use, http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/04/breakingdebate-republicans-actually-support-increased-renewable-energy/, accessed, 7-07-13 AMS]
Apparently, the debate over global warming is not as big as the hard-liners at Fox News and on
Capitol Hill would lead us to believe. A recent study released by Yale and George Mason University
found that nearly 80 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents support
increasing renewable energy use and more than 60 percent believe the United States should take
action to address climate change.
Interestingly, the report also found that only a third of Republican respondents agree with the GOPs
position on climate change, which has changed dramatically since 2008.

AT Oil Lobby Opposition

Renewable lobbies are fighting and winning against oil lobbying
Raymundo, Latin Post columnist, 14
[Shawn, 4-20-14, Latin Post, Koch Brothers, Conservatives & Oil Companies Lobby States Using
Renewable Energy Sources: Alternative, Solar Power And Environmentalism Gaining Popularity,
http://www.latinpost.com/articles/10814/20140420/koch-brothers-conservatives-oil-companies-lobbystates-using-renewable-energy-sources-alternative-solar-power-and-environmentalism-gainingpopularity.htm, accessed 7-9-14, AKS]
As more and more states are beginning to utilize solar energy and adapt to other clean green energy
solutions, conservative lobby groups and oil tycoons have aggressively started pushing back against
alternative energy.
The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and a number of powerful companies in the
nation have started running campaign ads in Arizona, Kansas and North Carolina that paint
renewable energy as a greedy bad guy, according to the Los Angeles Times.
With the help of solar power companies, environmentalists are battling back against big oil
companies and their lobbyists over states that have implemented two types of energy policies: net
metering and renewable energy requirements.
Net metering allows homeowners or businesses that have solar panels installed on roofs to sell back extra
electricity to the power grid at attractive rates. The other policy requires utility companies to generate at
least 10 percent of renewable energy, the Times reported.
The majority of states in the U.S. have begun operating under at least one of the two policies if not
both. The only states to not use net metering or generate power from renewable energy are Alabama,
Idaho, Mississippi and Tennessee.
South Dakota and Texas are the only two states without metering programs but generate a percentage of
their power from renewable energy, according to the Times.

AT Oil Lobby Election Clout

Oil lobbies cant swing elections
Goldenberg, The Guardian environment correspondent, 12
[Suzanne, 11-7-12, The Guardian, Oil lobby and Koch-backed groups spent $270m on anti-Obama ads,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/07/oil-lobby-coal-anti-obama-ads, accessed 7-9-14, AKS]
The oil and coal lobby and groups backed by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers spent
$270m on television ads in the final weeks of the election, attacking Barack Obama and Democratic
candidates for Congress.
It turns out not to have been a very good investment, according to the Centre for American
Progress Action Fund, which tracked the funding.
Obama won re-election, and carried Ohio and Virginia, which were heavily targeted by the ad
campaign, and at least half a dozen Democrats were also elected to the Senate despite being on the
receiving end of the oil and coal attack ads.

AT Media Hurts Renewables

Media perception of renewable energy has no effect on voters
Shahan, CleanTechnica* and Planetsave** director, 12
(Zach, 1-26-12, Cleantechnia, U.S. voters love clean energy, SOTU swing voter reactions show,
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/01/26/u-s-voters-love-clean-energy-sotu-swing-voter-reactions-show/,
accessed 7-7-14, CLF)
* The most popular cleantech-focused website in the world,
** A world-leading green and science news site
Ive written many, many times about the overwhelming support for clean energy in the U.S.
Unfortunately, a certain portion of our Congressional leaders, as well as billionaires in the oil
industry, are trying to attack that support for clean energy by running smear campaigns and
spewing complete lies (weve covered several of these more times than I can remember). Apparently, so
far, Americans arent buying it. Check out these results from ananalysis of 50 swing voters watching
the State of the Union address this week:
Not surprisingly, the moment in the speech that brought the most positive reaction was Obamas mention
of the death of Osama bin Laden. It drew an average reading of 80 on the 0-100 scale used by the
meters. Obamas call for more investment in renewable energy drew nearly as strong a reaction,
however, said Andrew Baumann, another of the pollsters who conducted the study. The passages of the
speech that talked about phasing out subsidies for oil companies and competing with China and
Germany for new developments in wind power and solar energy did particularly well.
Of course, an analysis of a focus group of 50 isnt definitive, but Ive yet to see any real evidence that
Koch and GOP smear campaigns and misinformation regarding Solyndra, loan guarantees, and clean
energy are having much effect . It really seems like a bad political move for these folks to make clean
energy the supposed enemy of the U.S.
I understand that their fortunes are tied to us remaining addicted to fossil fuels, but I think theyd
be better off just continuing their hidden policy attacks on clean energy than also trying to make it
a political issue. But thats just my two cents.
h/t Climate Progress | ground-mounted solar panels via shutterstock
Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or
keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle
newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.
Media perception doesnt matter clean tech surges forward

Johnston, freelance social media coordinator, 12

(Adam, 4-24-14, Cleantechnia, Cleantech Businesses Remain Bullish Despite Media Perception,
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/04/24/cleantech-businesses-remain-bullish-despite-media-perception/, 7-714, CLF)
As media perception of clean technology sectors has hit the wall hard, a study from accounting and
taxation company Grant Thornton suggests the future of clean technology and renewable energy
remains bullish.
The 2012 report, entitled Capturing Opportunity: Cleantech Business Booms Around The
World, suggests businesses within the clean technology sector in 2011 were more optimistic (37% net
optimism) compared to 2010 (34%). Meanwhile, all other sectors were less optimistic in 2011 at 22%,
compared to 24% in 2010.
Companies once approached the cleantech sector as buyers or sellers because it was a good
thing to do, a socially responsible corporate action, said Randy Free, partner with Grant Thornton in
the report.
But today, around the world, cleantech means reducing costs and increasing profits, he said.
The industry has grown leaps and bounds since the early 2000s and significantly cut costs along the
way. The solar photovoltaics industry has grown from $2.5 billion in 2000 to $91.6 billion in 2011,
according to data from Clean Edge. The wind sector grew from $4 billion in 2000 to $71.5 billion in
2011.
As the sector became more bullish, 64% of cleantech businesses were expected to increase their profits in
2011, compared to 42% in 2010, the report said. That was more than other sectors, 40% of which were
expected to increase their profits in 2011, up from 29% in 2010, the report said.
With the cleantech industry becoming bullish, the report also said there is further opportunity for
mergers and acquisitions. The report also suggested that there were likely to have been more
mergers and acquisitions 2011 than in 2010.

Solar

Conservative Opposition
Conservatives and the nations largest power companies oppose solar energy
Abrams, SALON assistant editor, 14
(Lindsey, 4-21-14, SALON, The Koch brothers are going after solar panels,
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/21/the_koch_brothers_are_going_after_solar_panels/, accessed 7-12-14,
CLF)
Homeowners and businesses that wish to generate their own cheap, renewable energy now have a force of
conservative political might to contend with, and the Koch brothers are leading the charge. The L.A.
Times, to its credit, found the positive spin to put on this: Little old solar has now grown big enough to
have enemies.
The escalating battle centers over two ways traditional utilities have found to counter the rapidly
growing solar market: demanding a share of the power generated by renewables and opposing net
metering, which allows solar panel users to sell the extra electricity they generate back to the grid
and without which solar might no longer be affordable. The Times reports on the conservative
heavyweights making a fossil fuel-powered effort to make those things happen:
The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nations largest power
companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy .
The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the
battle rapidly spreading to other states.
The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a membership group for conservative state
lawmakers, recently drafted model legislation that targeted net metering. The group also helped launch
efforts by conservative lawmakers in more than half a dozen states to repeal green energy mandates.
State governments are starting to wake up, Christine Harbin Hanson, a spokeswoman for Americans
for Prosperity, the advocacy group backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, said
in an email. The organization has led the effort to overturn the mandate in Kansas, which requires
that 20% of the states electricity come from renewable sources.
These green energy mandates are bad policy, said Hanson, adding that the group was hopeful Kansas
would be the first of many dominoes to fall.
The groups campaign in that state compared the green energy mandate to Obamacare, featuring ominous
images of Kathleen Sebelius, the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services, who was Kansas
governor when the state adopted the requirement.
Conservatives hate solar with such passionKoch brothers and powerful energy
companies
Halper, Washington D.C. Policy reporter, 14

(Evan, 4-19-14, The Los Angeles Times, Koch brothers, big utilities attack solar, green energy policies,
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-solar-kochs-20140420-story.html#page=1, accessed 7-12-14, CLF)
WASHINGTON The political attack ad that ran recently in Arizona had some familiar hallmarks of the
genre, including a greedy villain who hogged sweets for himself and made children cry.
But the bad guy, in this case, wasn't a fat-cat lobbyist or someone's political opponent.
He was a solar-energy consumer.
Solar, once almost universally regarded as a virtuous, if perhaps over-hyped, energy alternative, has now
grown big enough to have enemies.
The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation's largest power
companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy.
The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the
battle rapidly spreading to other states.
Alarmed environmentalists and their allies in the solar industry have fought back, battling the other
side to a draw so far. Both sides say the fight is growing more intense as new states, including Ohio,
South Carolina and Washington, enter the fray.
At the nub of the dispute are two policies found in dozens of states. One requires utilities to get a certain
share of power from renewable sources. The other, known as net metering, guarantees homeowners or
businesses with solar panels on their roofs the right to sell any excess electricity back into the power grid
at attractive rates.
Net metering forms the linchpin of the solar-energy business model. Without it, firms say, solar power
would be prohibitively expensive.
The power industry argues that net metering provides an unfair advantage to solar consumers, who
don't pay to maintain the power grid although they draw money from it and rely on it for backup
on cloudy days. The more people produce their own electricity through solar, the fewer are left being
billed for the transmission lines, substations and computer systems that make up the grid, industry
officials say.
"If you are using the grid and benefiting from the grid, you should pay for it," said David Owens,
executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, the advocacy arm for the industry. "If you don't,
other customers have to absorb those costs."
The institute has warned power companies that profits could erode catastrophically if current policies and
market trends continue. If electricity companies delay in taking political action, the group warned in
a report, "it may be too late to repair the utility business model."
The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a membership group for conservative state
lawmakers, recently drafted model legislation that targeted net metering. The group also helped launch
efforts by conservative lawmakers in more than half a dozen states to repeal green energy
mandates.

"State governments are starting to wake up," Christine Harbin Hanson, a spokeswoman for Americans for
Prosperity, the advocacy group backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, said in an
email. The organization has led the effort to overturn the mandate in Kansas, which requires that 20% of
the state's electricity come from renewable sources.
"These green energy mandates are bad policy," said Hanson, adding that the group was hopeful
Kansas would be the first of many dominoes to fall.
The group's campaign in that state compared the green energy mandate to Obamacare, featuring ominous
images of Kathleen Sebelius, the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services, who was Kansas'
governor when the state adopted the requirement.
The Kansas Senate voted late last month to repeal the mandate, but solar industry allies in the state House
blocked the move.
Environmentalists were unnerved. "The want to roll it back here so they can start picking off other
states," said Dorothy Barnett, director of the Climate and Energy Project, a Kansas advocacy group.
The arguments over who benefits from net metering, meanwhile, are hotly disputed. Some studies,
including one published recently by regulators in Vermont, conclude that solar customers bring enough
benefits to a regional power supply to fully defray the cost of the incentive.
Utilities deny that and are spending large sums to greatly scale back the policy.
In Arizona, a major utility and a tangle of secret donors and operatives with ties to ALEC and the Kochs
invested millions to persuade state regulators to impose a monthly fee of $50 to $100 on netmetering customers.
Two pro-business groups, at least one of which had previously reported receiving millions of dollars from
the Koch brothers, formed the campaign's public face. Their activities were coordinated by GOP
consultant Sean Noble and former Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams, two early architects of the Koch
network of nonprofits.
In October, California ethics officials levied a $1-million fine after accusing groups the two men ran
during the 2012 election of violating state campaign finance laws in an effort to hide the identities of
donors.
The Arizona Public Service Co., the state's utility, also had Noble on its payroll. As a key vote at the
Arizona Corporation Commission approached late last year, one of the commissioners expressed
frustration that anonymous donors had bankrolled the heated campaign. He demanded APS reveal its
involvement. The utility reported it had spent $3.7 million.
"Politically oriented nonprofits are a fact of life today and provide a vehicle for individuals and
organizations with a common point of view to express themselves," company officials said in a statement
in response to questions about their campaign.
The solar companies, seeking to sway the corporation commission, an elected panel made up entirely of
Republicans, formed an organization aimed at building support among conservatives. The group, Tell
Utilities Solar won't be Killed, is led by former California congressman Barry Goldwater Jr., a Republican
Party stalwart.

"These solar companies are becoming popular, and utilities don't like competition," Goldwater said.
"I believe people ought to have a choice."
The commission ultimately voted to impose a monthly fee on solar consumers of $5.
The solar firms declared victory. But utility industry officials and activists at ALEC and Americans
for Prosperity say the battles are just getting underway. They note the Kansas legislation will soon be
up for reconsideration, and fights elsewhere have barely begun.
In North Carolina, executives at Duke Energy, the country's largest electric utility, have made clear the
state's net metering law is in their sights. The company's lobbying effort is just beginning. But already,
Goldwater's group has begun working in the state, launching a social media and video campaign accusing
Duke of deceit.
"The intention of these proposals is to eliminate the rooftop solar industry," said Bryan Miller, president
of the Alliance for Solar Choice, an industry group.
"They have picked some of the most conservative states in the country," he added. "But rooftop solar
customers are voters, and policymakers ultimately have to listen to the public."
Koch Brothers and Major power companies are waging a war on solar energy
Horsey, Los Angeles Times, 14
(David, 4-23-14, The Los Angeles Times, Koch brothers and big utilities campaign to unplug solar
power, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-koch-brothers-and-solar-power20140422-story.html, accessed 7-12-14, CLF)
The Koch brothers have a new ploy to protect the traditional energy business that helped make them
the planets fifth- and sixth-richest humans. They are funding a campaign to shackle solar energy
consumers who have escaped the grip of big electric utilities.
Of all the pro-business, anti-government causes they have funded with their billions, this may be the most
cynical and self-serving. On Sunday, a Los Angeles Times story by Evan Halper outlined the Kochs
latest scheme. Along with anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, several major power companies and a
national association representing conservative state legislators, the brothers are aiming to kill
preferences for the burgeoning solar power industry that have been put into law in dozens of states.
Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona are their first targets, with more to come.
They already have their first victory. On Monday, Oklahomas Republican Gov. Mary Fallin signed
a bill passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature that authorizes electric utilities to tack a surcharge
on the bills of private citizens who have installed solar panels or wind turbines on their homes.
Thats right, Oklahomans who have spent money to generate their own clean and green power now must
pay compensation to the power companies.

This sounds a bit like government trampling on the independence of the citizenry. Youd think the tea
party would be protesting and militia groups would be riding in with guns drawn. But since it is
Republicans and big business doing the trampling, there is, as yet, no outcry from the libertarian crowd.
So, what is driving this crusade against clean energy? As Halper reports, At the nub of the dispute
are two policies found in dozens of states. One requires utilities to get a certain share of power from
renewable sources. The other, known as net metering, guarantees homeowners or businesses with solar
panels on their roofs the right to sell any excess electricity back into the power grid at attractive
rates.
These laws have helped the solar industry reach a tipping point where the business model is finally
viable. In a world where too much CO2 from coal, gas and oil is being pumped into the atmosphere, that
seems like a good thing, but the Kochs and the utilities claim solars success is a threat to the future
of the power grid. If there are more and more households freeing themselves from total reliance on
traditional power sources, there will be less money available to maintain the electricity delivery
infrastructure.
They may have a valid point, but the problem could be addressed with modest adjustments to the
system. That they have opted for an all-out war against key laws that promote alternative energy
suggests the real motivation may be more crass: protecting the profits of the entrenched fossil fuelsbased energy industry.

Environmentalists Support Solar

Environmentalists are ready to fight for solar power
Horsey, Los Angeles Times, 14
(David, 4-23-14, The Los Angeles Times, Koch brothers and big utilities campaign to unplug solar
power, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-koch-brothers-and-solar-power20140422-story.html, accessed 7-12-14, CLF)
So, what is driving this crusade against clean energy? As Halper reports, At the nub of the dispute
are two policies found in dozens of states. One requires utilities to get a certain share of power from
renewable sources. The other, known as net metering, guarantees homeowners or businesses with solar
panels on their roofs the right to sell any excess electricity back into the power grid at attractive
rates.
These laws have helped the solar industry reach a tipping point where the business model is finally
viable. In a world where too much CO2 from coal, gas and oil is being pumped into the atmosphere, that
seems like a good thing, but the Kochs and the utilities claim solars success is a threat to the future of the
power grid. If there are more and more households freeing themselves from total reliance on traditional
power sources, there will be less money available to maintain the electricity delivery infrastructure.
They may have a valid point, but the problem could be addressed with modest adjustments to the
system. That they have opted for an all-out war against key laws that promote alternative energy suggests
the real motivation may be more crass: protecting the profits of the entrenched fossil fuels-based energy
industry.
Environmentalists have been energized to stand in the way of this well-funded multi-state
onslaught against solar power , and it is gratifying to hear there is one conservative with a venerable
Republican lineage who is taking their side. Former California congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. has
formed a group, awkwardly named Tell Utilities Solar wont be Killed, that hopes to gather support
among conservatives to oppose the big utilities.
These solar companies are becoming popular, and utilities dont like competition, Goldwater told The
Times. I believe people ought to have a choice.

Offshore Wind

GOP Opposition
Wind energy is unpopular key oil lobbies and Republican lawmakers oppose.
Martin, Bloomberg News, 13
Killing support for renewable-energy policies threatens sales at companies from wind-turbine
makers General Electric Co (GE). and Siemens AG (SIE) to SolarCity Corp. (SCTY), the San Mateo,
California-based rooftop energy developer.
The push at the state level replicates efforts in Washington. Opposition from Republican
lawmakers delayed the extension of a federal tax credit for wind power, prompting Vestas, the
biggest turbine maker after GE, to fire 10 percent of its workforce at two Colorado factories.
There havent been any outright repeals yet, but weve seen some watering-down, said Justin
Barnes, senior policy analyst at the North Carolina Solar Center. Activity against renewable portfolio
standards has been increasing in the past year. Their arguments are mostly on cost.
The Raleigh, North Carolina-based research group is supported by the Energy Department and operates
the DSIRE database of state incentives.
Offshore wind unpopular with Republicans concerns about picking winners and
losers
Dlouhy, Houston Chronicle, 13
[Jennifer A., 6-4-13, Fuel Fix, Republicans attack landmark offshore wind power plan,
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/06/04/feds-to-unveil-details-on-first-federal-offshore-wind-auction/,
The Interior Department unveiled details for the nations first-ever federal sale of offshore wind
energy leases on Tuesday, even as Republican lawmakers complain the approach is misguided.
Federal officials had already announced plans to sell wind leases off the Atlantic Coast this year, but the
sale package released Tuesday firmly schedules the auction for July 31 and sheds more light on the terms
of those leases.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the sale could be a harbinger of things to come.

Were optimistic with this lease sale well see some action, Jewell told reporters on an unrelated
conference call on Monday. If there is good interest in this one, then I think you will have this happening
on a consistent basis.
Jewells optimism is borne in part from her experience in the private sector. Jewell was CEO of
Recreational Equipment Inc., while the chain of retail stores made deals to buy renewable energy to offset
its carbon emissions. We actively pursued the purchase of wind energy and solar energy as well, Jewell
said. There is demand out there for companies that are looking to reduce their carbon footprint.
But Jewell stopped short of predicting her potentially four-year tenure at Interior will see commercial
offshore wind developments, which face financial as well as structural hurdles. The projects are
massive, expensive and tough to finance.
It will really be up to industry to decide the time frame under which they choose to develop wind energy
resources, Jewell said. What were really doing at the Department of Interior is giving people an
opportunity to use these resources. We certainly dont want to be a roadblock to them being in production
in four years, if it makes sense to the community.
The market will dictate, she added. We certainly wont get in the way.
But Republicans say that approach stands in sharp contrast to the Obama administrations
handling of traditional energy development in other coastal areas .
A five-year plan for selling offshore oil and gas leases around the U.S. does not include any auctions
along the East Coast, including an area off Virginia where an auction was previously planned. That
Virginia lease sale was canceled after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, with Interior officials
citing Defense Department concerns about interfering with operations in the area as a major factor.
Legislation pending in the House would force the the Obama administration to sell offshore drilling leases
off the coast of Virginia. And on Thursday, the House Natural Resources Committee is set to hold a
hearing on legislation by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., that would force the Interior Department to redo
its five-year oil and gas lease sale schedule, to include Atlantic areas.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., on Tuesday renewed his request for economic data about the potential
revenue from a wind lease sale, compared to the value of leasing similar acreage for oil and gas
development. He and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., previously asked Interior for the information
seven months ago.
Vitter accused the administration of picking energy industry winners and losers by blessing the
offshore wind sale while forestalling oil and gas development in the same Atlantic waters.
While they do everything they can to advantage renewable energy production, they ignore the
benefits that traditional energy provides, Vitter said in a news release. The federal government
receives significant revenue from royalties for offshore oil and gas production in the form of rents,
royalties, bonus bids and taxes. Can the same be said for any potential offshore wind project?

GOP Opposition to Tax Incentives

Recent tax incentives and breaks are opposed by House Democrats causes fights
Rubin, Bloomberg News, 14
[Richard, 4-29-14, Bloomberg Business Week, Business Tax Breaks of $310 Billion Advance After
Squabble (2), http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-04-29/business-tax-breaks-of-310-billion-sparkpartisan-squabble, accessed 7-9-14, AAZ]
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee approved $310 billion of tax breaks, as Republicans
defeated Democratic objections to the plans budgetary costs.
The tax breaks, many of which benefit companies such as Intel Corp. (INTC:US) and General Electric
Co. (GE:US), have bipartisan support. How and whether to offset their cost remains an area of dispute,
which prompted some Democrats to vote against bills they cosponsored earlier this month.
The Republicans proposal would make the tax benefits permanent, ending the lapse-and-revive cycle that
has persisted for years. The six breaks whose extension was approved today and dozens of others expired
Dec. 31. The move separates some of the breaks from Republicans broader goal of revamping the U.S.
tax code.
We have to start somewhere, said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, a Michigan
Republican. Were starting with bills that have had bipartisan sponsors.
Democrats argued that the Republican plan is fiscally irresponsible , because it doesnt include
offsetting spending cuts or tax increases, and unfair as Republicans maintain that the cost of extending
unemployment benefits should be covered.
Democrats also complained about the uncertain fate of other tax breaks, such as those for hiring
workers from disadvantaged groups and installing wind turbines.
Serious Understatement
To say that Republican action today is hypocritical is a serious understatement, said
Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.
Democrats didnt offer specific proposals for offsetting the costs. In the past, they have supported higher
taxes for oil companies and private equity managers to pay for extensions. The provisions have repeatedly
been extended without those revenue-raising items attached, most recently in January 2013.
Camp said the committee would consider other expired provisions later this year. He wouldnt say which
ones he supports making permanent; among the largest are bonus depreciation for capital expenses and
the ability to deduct state sales taxes.
This is just the beginning of doing a thorough, methodical review, said Camp, who is retiring from
Congress when this term ends.

The panel voted 22-12 today to endorse the permanent extension of the research credit, which has existed
since 1981 and has never been made permanent.
Tax incentives are unpopular Republicans view it as a trade off with other
industries
Hanson, Americans for Prosperity Federal Issue Campaign Manager, 14
[Christine H., 6-18-14, Forbes, Support For Wind Subsidies Divides Republicans,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/06/18/support-for-wind-subsidies-divides-republicans/,
In arguing that that tax credits are needed to boost employment in the wind industry, proponents
overlook what the rest of the economy gives up in exchange for them . In reality the PTC is a net
jobs loserit distracts labor and capital away from more efficient areas in the economy and slows
over all growth. Wind turbine makers may be able to plump up their payrollsjust as any tax handout
will boost employment in a targeted industrybut the rest of the economy suffers as a result. Any
boost in employment among wind turbine makers is inherently temporary.
Compared to other forms of electricity generation, wind power is far from cost competitive. The wind
PTC is an outrageously large subsidy, leading to giant disruptions in the energy market. At $23 per
megawatt-hour, the PTC is worth half (and sometimes even more) of the entire wholesale price of
electricity in many parts of the country. In fact, the PTC is so lavish and anti-cost-competitive that wind
power producers often bid negative prices into electrical grid, just so they can collect the subsidy. They
literally pay utilities to take their electricity.
Lawmakers should oppose resurrecting this tax break for wind energy because its costly, and
increasingly sothe PTC cost $12 billion in 2014, up from a historical average of $5 billion per year.
In practice, targeted subsidies are a tried-and-terrible way to develop new energy sources, Under
President Obamas direction, the federal government has tried to prop up its favorite energy sources with
targeted subsidiestax credits, grants, loan guarantees, state-based mandates, etc.with little to show
besides slower economic growth. Too many of these pet projects have gone bankrupt and belly-up,
sticking taxpayers with the bill, and failing to get the U.S. any closer to its energy goals.
Even Warren Buffett readily admits that wind energy is a terrible investment[O]n wind energy, we get
a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. Thats the only reason to build them. They dont make sense
without the tax credit.
At its core, the wind PTC is no different than these green energy boondoggles like Solyndra and its
successors. It represents exactly the kind of government meddling in the economy that Republicans
campaign against. Republicans in particular should live up to their stated principles of free markets
and level playing fields by opposing extending the PTC.

Lobby Opposition
Powerful oil coal and gas company Koch Industries enlisted networks to campaign
against wind energy
Negin, Union of Concerned Scientists news director, 13
(Elliott, 12-9-13, The Huffington Post, The Koch Brothers Are Still Trying to Break Wind,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/the-koch-brothers-are-sti_b_4396033.html, accessed 7-1214, CLF)
As Congress dithers for the umpteenth time over extending a key subsidy for wind energy, the industry
once again is up in the air. Called the production tax credit (PTC), the subsidy helps level the
playing field between wind and fossil fuels and has proven to be critical for financing new projects,
helping to make wind one of the fastest growing electricity sources in the country. Given the planet
needs to transition as quickly as possible away from coal and natural gas to carbon-free energy to
avoid the worst consequences of climate change, who would be against renewing wind's tax credit?
The Koch brothers, that's who.
Charles G. and David H. Koch -- the billionaire owners of the coal, oil and gas Koch Industries
conglomerate -- have enlisted their extensive network of think tanks, advocacy groups and friends
on Capitol Hill to spearhead a campaign to pull the plug on the PTC. Never mind the fact that the oil
and gas industry has averaged four times what the wind tax credit is worth in federal tax breaks and
subsidies annually for the last 95 years.
The Koch network is fighting the wind industry on a number of fronts . Last month, Koch-funded
Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) sent a letter signed by 52 House members to the chairman
of the House Ways and Means Committee, urging him to let the PTC expire. Meanwhile, a coalition
of some 100 national and local groups organized by the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity sent
a letter to each member of Congress asking them to do the same. And earlier this month, the Kochfunded Institute for Energy Research launched an anti-PTC ad campaign and released a report
claiming that only a handful of states actually benefit from the subsidy.
Malcolm Gladwell didn't include this battle in his new book David and Goliath because, given the odds,
it's more like Bambi versus Godzilla.
Powerful oil lobby and Koch brothers lobby to block wind

Negin, Union of Concerned Scientists news director, 13
(Elliott, 12-9-13, The Huffington Post, The Koch Brothers Are Still Trying to Break Wind,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/the-koch-brothers-are-sti_b_4396033.html, accessed 7-1214, CLF)
The Kochs' Man in Congress

The fact that Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo is the Kochs' point man to scuttle the PTC in the House is a
bit ironic given his state is a wind energy leader. Kansas has the second highest wind potential in the
country, it has already attracted more than $5 billion in wind industry investment, and last year wind
generated 11.4 percent of its electricity. With stats like that, the industry has broad bipartisan support.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts -- all Republicans -- are big fans.
Pompeo, who has been in Congress since only 2011, would argue that he's against all energy tax
credits. For the second year in a row, he has introduced a bill that would eliminate tax breaks that benefit
oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, electric vehicles, alternative fuels, solar and wind, including the PTC, which
gives wind developers a tax credit of 2.3 cents for each kilowatt-hour of electricity they produce.
But there's a catch. Although it appears evenhanded, Pompeo's bill would severely hamper wind and
solar but preserve a number of oil, gas and coal subsidies, including the percentage depletion
allowance, the ability to expense the costs of exploration, and the accelerated depreciation of certain
kinds of "geologic property." These and other tax breaks he left out of his bill would be worth about
$12.5 billion to the oil and gas industry from 2011 through 2015, according to a March 2012
Congressional Research Service report.
Why is Pompeo so down on wind? Perhaps it's because Koch Industries is headquartered in
Wichita, smack-dab in the middle of his district -- and the fact that the company is by far and away
his biggest campaign contributor. Since 2010, Koch Industries has given him $200,000, more than
four times what his second highest contributor kicked in. Besides Koch Industries, three other oil
companies are among Pompeo's top five contributors -- McCoy Petroleum, Mull Drilling and Richie
Exploration -- and they're also based in Wichita.
What about the other 51 House members who signed Pompeo's letter? As it turns out, 65 percent of
them received contributions from Koch Industries during the last two or three campaign cycles,
according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive
Politics. A quarter of them, meanwhile, cashed checks from ExxonMobil. And except for two
congressmen who didn't take any energy industry money, the signatories received sizable contributions
from a number of other corporations that compete with wind, including coal barons Arch Coal and Alpha
Natural Resources; oil and gas giants Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Valero Energy;
and Exelon, which owns the most nuclear reactors in the country.
Americans for (Koch) Prosperity Weighs In
Pompeo's letter came on the heels of a letter from the Kochs' flagship advocacy group, Americans
for Prosperity, calling for Congress to kill the PTC. AFP's letter, which was signed by 102
organizations, claims that "the wind industry has very little to show after 20 years of preferential tax
treatment" and declares that "Americans deserve energy solutions that can make it on their own in
the marketplace -- not ones that need to be propped up by government indefinitely."
Is that right? Little to show? Preferential tax treatment?
In fact, until Congress left the wind industry hanging late last year, it had been doing quite well.
Even with a deep recession and slow recovery, over the previous five years -- with the help of the PTC,
stimulus spending and state renewable electricity standards -- the industry doubled its electricity output,
employment and private investment. In 2012, domestic manufacturers produced roughly 72 percent of the
wind turbine equipment erected across the country -- nearly triple the percentage in 2006 -- and more than

13,000 megawatts of new wind generation capacity was installed. By the end of last year, there were
enough wind turbines to power 15 million typical American homes -- without toxic pollutants or
carbon emissions.
But AFP's complaint that the wind industry has been on the dole far too long is even more galling. What
about the oil and gas industry? It's been feeding at the federal trough since 1918! On average, the industry
has benefited from $4.86 billion in tax breaks and subsidies in today's dollars every year since then,
according to a 2011 study by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm. Renewable energy technologies,
meanwhile, averaged only $370 million a year in subsidies between 1994 and 2009. The 2009 stimulus
package did provide $21 billion for wind, solar and other renewables, but that support barely begins to
balance the scales that have tilted toward nuclear power for more than 50 years, oil and gas for 95 years,
and coal for more than two centuries.
So who signed the AFP letter? About half of the signatories are local tea party affiliates and anti-wind
NIMBY groups of indeterminate size and funding. The other half are, for the most part, relatively obscure
national groups, but there are a few that have attractedattention over the years for their contrarian views
on climate science and renewable energy. Like AFP, those groups are awash in petrodollars. The
American Energy Alliance (and its parent, the Institute for Energy Research), Competitive Enterprise
Institute, Freedom Works, Frontiers of Freedom and Heritage Action (and its parent, the Heritage
Foundation) collectively have received millions of dollars from Koch family foundations, ExxonMobil
and the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's premier trade association.
The Institute for Energy Research's Questionable Research
On December 3, the Institute for Energy Research and its political arm, the American Energy Alliance,
sponsored what they dubbed the "wind welfare" summit in Washington, D.C., featuring IER founder and
CEO Robert Bradley Jr., a Koch network veteran. AEA announced it would spend $40,000 on print and
digital ads calling for an end to the PTC and is flying in anti-PTC advocates for meetings on Capitol Hill.
Bradley presumably highlighted the findings of a report IER released the day before claiming that a small
number of states with wind resources -- Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas -- are reaping the
benefits of the PTC while 30 states and the District of Columbia are "losing millions" to fund it.
The report's findings, however, don't hold up to scrutiny. Mike Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the
Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out in a recent blog that IER ignored the fact that a number of the
states it identified as "net payers" are home to wind industry manufacturing facilities. There are 62
companies in Ohio making turbine components, for example, 40 in Michigan and 21 in California. Jacobs
also discovered that IER downplayed the fact that "the PTC benefits consumers where wind-generated
electricity adds to the supply and lowers the price of electricity, landowners who receive lease payments
from the wind turbines, and local communities that collect tax payments on installed wind farms."
Jeff Spross, blogging on the Center for American Progress' ThinkProgress website, alsochided IER,
pointing out that most industries are not equally distributed across the country. "The oil and gas
industries, for instance, benefit from a wealth of federal tax carve-outs," he wrote, "but the economic
activity they generate is concentrated in just a few key states."
In other words, it's disingenuous to single out the wind industry.
Twisting in the Wind

While Congress has generously provided the fossil-fuel and nuclear-energy industries a number of
permanent subsidies, it has typically granted the wind industry the PTC on a short-term basis and
then wavered over renewing it. Last year the PTC expired on December 31, but as part of the "fiscal
cliff" budget deal the next day, Congress extended it for the seventh time since it debuted in 1992 -- for
only one year.
This uncertainty over the PTC's status has put wind developers at a distinct disadvantage, making
it difficult to attract investors and plan ahead. Last year's cliffhanger, for example, definitely did a
number on the industry. Wind farm construction has fallen off dramatically compared with 2012:
Only one utility-scale wind turbine was installed in the first six months of this year. Business picked up
somewhat in the third quarter, with 68.3 megawatts installed, according to the American Wind Energy
Association, but that's far below the average of more than 1,000 megawatts that the industry constructed
in most quarters in recent years.
Given that it takes years to plan, finance and construct a wind farm, Congress is again undermining
the industry's potential by slow-walking the PTC extension this year. And that potential is
tremendous. Wind currently generates about 4 percent of U.S. electricity, but by 2030 it could
produce more than 20 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The DOE's National
Renewable Energy Laboratory also is bullish on wind and renewables writ large. Last year, it published
a report that concluded today's commercially available renewable technologies could easily generate 80
percent of U.S. electricity by 2050, with nearly half coming from wind. If the Koch brothers and their
allies have their way, however, it likely will take a lot longer to get there -- and it will cost a hell of a lot
more.

Public Opposition
Offshore wind is unpopular key bureaucratic impediments, land owners, loss of
confidence, lack of technology
Salih, Roosevelt Institute's Columbia Chapter, Environment leader, 7/2/14
[Swara, 7-2-14, Huffington Post, Will Offshore Wind Pick up the Speed?,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/swara-salih/will-offshore-wind-pick-u_b_5549967.html , accessed 7-614, AAZ]
Constructing any sort of energy infrastructure is expensive and lengthy, and the construction of these
facilities and their maintenance are highly expensive (which the PTC helps to alleviate), but analysts
have said that offshore wind's benefits could ultimately outweigh the costs. What's kept it from
taking off? It appears to be an issue with the permitting process for the plants themselves. While there is
a vested private and public interest in building the facilities, firms constantly run into bureaucratic red
tape that hinders their construction. The permitting process for wind farms can take two years or longer to
complete, and so the uncertainty of the tax credit's extension often makes developers hesitate to begin.
With no infrastructure in place for offshore wind farms, this makes receiving permits an exceedingly
difficult task. Infrastructure is also expensive to construct, putting the price of a facility like Cape Wind in
Massachusetts in the range of $2-3 billion, which makes permitting all the more less likely.
But there have been various state-level efforts at fostering offshore wind energy industries. In 2010,
Governor Chris Christie signed the bipartisan Offshore Wind Economic Development Act, which
established an offshore wind renewable energy certificate (OREC) program to make financial assistance
and tax credits available to businesses that could build the necessary infrastructure. However, projects
have encountered various bureaucratic impediments. This past March, the New Jersey Board of
Public Utilities (BPU) halted the construction of Fishermen's Energy, despite the project's guarantee of
a $47 million federal grant from the DOE. The plant would need to be 2.8 miles off the coast of Atlantic
City, and would cost a total of $188 million while providing 25 MW of electricity, enough to power
10,000 homes. The BPU cited concerns that household payers would end up paying "hundreds of
millions of dollars" for power and that the federal grants were "unsecured." This past May, however,
Fishermen's Energy received the federal grant, prompting them to appeal to the BPU to overturn their
previous decision. Some suspect that the BPU has put less confidence in renewable utilities due to
Chris Christie's faltering support for them, ironic considering he spearheaded the bipartisan legislation in
2010.
Dominion Virginia was more fortunate, and bought a lease for 113,000 acres last September from the
Department of the Interior (DOI), aiming to provide energy to around 700,000 homes. However,
Dominion has little intention of using all this acreage any time soon, with the cost of offshore wind
remaining three times as expensive as natural gas (a key commodity of Dominion). Dominion's senior
vice president for alternative energy solutions Mary Doswell is on record saying that though offshore
wind is a "large scale, sustainable resource," Dominion would need to "work on the cost," and that the
company is waiting on "technological advances" that would make construction cheaper. Yet they are

still working on two 6 MW offshore turbines, for which they have also received a $47 million grant from
the DOE. These turbines would be 24 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, and Dominion says that with
regulatory approval, they could be operation by 2017 and provide electricity to 3,000 homes.
Cape Wind Associates LLC proposed their project for a large-scale facility of 130 turbines off the
coast of Cape Cod in 2001, and the firm only received its permit in October 2010, following lengthy
environmental reviews and inspections. The projected total capacity of the project is 468 MW, and is
expected to generate 1600 gigawatt-hours/year. The Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) projects that
this could generate enough power for tens of thousands of homes in Massachusetts. Despite these
purported advantages the project has faced opposition from wealthy homeowners who claim it
would ruin their views, businesses that fear its power rate increases, and fishermen who say it
would interfere with their catches. Among these wealthy homeowners is William Koch, who has poured
millions of dollars into derailing the project, allegedly to protect the view from his waterfront estate.
However, Cape Wind is readying its ocean construction in 2015 and plans to start distributing power by
2016, having received nearly $1 billion in loans from Danish and Japanese companies. Unlike Dominion
and Fishermen's Energy, it has not received a grant from the DOE, though it hopes to receive a $500
million loan guarantee from the department soon.

LNG Terminals

Congressional Opposition to LNG Terminals

LNG export permits generates congressional backlash
Levi, Council on Foreign Relations Energy and Environment Senior Fellow, 12
[Michael, June 2012, Hamilton Project, A Strategy for U.S. Natural Gas Exports,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/6/13%20exports
%20levi/06_exports_levi, accessed 6/26/14, AC]
But there is also great wariness in many quarters about the prospect of allowing exports of natural
gas. Americans usually support exports, but natural gas, along with other energy commodities, has
recently received special scrutiny. Some fear that allowing exports would dangerously drive up
domestic natural gas prices while making the U.S. gas market more volatile. Others would prefer
that domestic gas be directed toward boosting manufacturing at home, replacing coal-fired power
plants, or taking the place of oil as the ultimate fuel for American cars and trucks. Still more oppose
natural gas exports because those exports would result in greater U.S. natural gas production,
potentially leading to social and environmental disruption. All of these parties oppose natural gas
exports, or at least seek significant constraints. Some are driven by broad visions of the national interest
to conclude that natural gas exports would have negative consequences that are not captured by simple
economic logic. Others are motivated by more self-interested concerns, particularly the desire to secure
cheap energy inputs for their industries.
LNG permit applications are empirically unpopularturns case

Natural Gas Intelligence, Leading Gas information newsletter, 9
[NGI is a leading Natural Gas information newsletter, 1/19/9, Natural Gas Intelligence, FERC
Makes Unpopular Decision to approve Sparrows Point,
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/19185-ferc-makes-unpopular-decision-to-approvesparrows-point, accessed 7/8/14, AC]
Conceding that its decision was "not a popular" one, FERC last Thursday approved, subject to 169
conditions, the controversial AES Sparrows Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal project
near Baltimore and associated Mid-Atlantic Express pipeline, which would bring 1.5 Bcf/d of natural
gas to growing markets in the Northeast. The agency also upheld on rehearing two order authorizing
two LNG projects -- Dominion Cove Point LNG on the eastern shore of Maryland, andNorthernStar
Natural Gas Inc.'s Bradwood Landing LNG terminal project in Oregon.
With respect to Sparrows Point, "our primary concern is assuring public safety. We have done so in this
order by attaching 169 conditions that will protect public safety and mitigate any adverse environmental
impact," said FERC Chairman Joseph Kelliher. "I realize this is not a popular decision, but it is the
correct decision, rooted in voluminous record and based on sound science."

The Sparrows Point project, which was been the target of intense opposition by state and federal
politicians, would have about 1.5 Bcf/d of regasification capacity with a potential for expansion to
2.25 Bcf/d. Regasified LNG would be delivered to regional markets via Mid-Atlantic Express, an 88mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline that would extend from the terminal to connections with interstate
pipelines at Eagle, PA.
The project, including three LNG tanks to store up to 480,000 cubic meters of LNG, would be located on
80 acres within the existing Sparrows Point Industrial Complex southeast of Baltimore in Baltimore
County. The site was previously owned by Bethlehem Steel and housed a steel manufacturing and
shipbuilding facility.
The decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission came two days after the state of
Maryland, in a last-ditch effort, urged FERC to withhold approval of the terminal and pipeline
project until the concerns of state and local governments are fully addressed. Maryland's concerns
about the LNG terminal proposed near Baltimore are "substantial and numerous," wrote Bruce
Michael of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources in a letter to the Commission last Tuesday.
Even with FERC's approval of the terminal and pipeline project, Maryland could delay the
construction of the facilities indefinitely by refusing to issue water permits -- as some states have
done with contentious gas projects within their boundaries.

Offshore Drilling

Offshore Drilling Spends Political Capital

Expanded offshore drilling causes political backlash
Hobson, National Journal energy and environmental correspondent, 12
[Margret, 4-18-12, E&E Publishing, Obamas Development Plans Gain Little Political Traction in Years
since Gulf Spill, http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059963022, accessed 7-4-13, HG]
That report criticized Congress for failing to adopt new oil spill safety laws but praised the Interior
Department and industry for making progress in improving offshore oil development safety,
environmental protection and oil spill preparation.
An environmental group was less complimentary. 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 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."
Controversial offshore drilling is hugely unpopular with Congress and causes

backlash from Democrats
Geman, energy and environment reporter for the Hill, 10

[Ben, 4-1-10, The Hill, Obamas Offshore Drilling Push Shakes Up Congressional Fight Over Climate
Change, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/90137-drilling-push-shakes-up-climate-fight-, accessed
7-7-13, HG]
President Barack Obamas offshore drilling proposal has shaken up the Capitol Hill climate change
fight.The White House has been emphasizing its support for nuclear power and oil drilling as it courts
Republican and centrist Democratic endorsements of greenhouse gas emissions curbs.
Under the administration plan, the Interior Department will proceed with a lease sale for companies
interested in drilling 50 miles off the Virginia coast before 2012. Leasing off the coasts of other midAtlantic and Southeastern states would be authorized in Interiors 2012-2017 program.
The White House is also calling for opening a major swath of the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which is
mostly off-limits under a 2006 Gulf drilling law.
While most of the drilling proposal can be undertaken using executive power, expanded drilling in
the eastern Gulf of Mexico would require congressional approval. That will surely play a role in the
fight over energy and climate legislation that Democrats hope to bring to the floor.
Republicans called Obamas plan too narrow, as it closes off or delays leasing or sales in other areas.
The energy consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners, in a research note Wednesday, said the limits of
the White House plan give architects of the Senate energy and climate bill an opening to woo new
support.
One obvious implication of todays announcement: delaying and canceling OCS [Outer Continental
Shelf] sales gives lawmakers the opportunity to sweeten a climate bill by restoring or accelerating
sales, ClearView states.
But the White House and the architects of Senate legislation Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey
Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) risk losing support among liberal Democrats
and environmentalists as they seek expanded drilling.
For instance, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) attacked the plan Wednesday.
Drilling off the Virginia coast would endanger many of New Jerseys beaches and vibrant coastal
economies, Lautenberg said in a prepared statement.
Environmental groups that are on board with efforts to craft a compromise climate change and energy bill
such as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council also slammed the proposal.
Both the GOP and Democrats are highly polarized on offshore drilling causes
backlash
Geman, energy and environment reporter for the Hill, 10

[Ben, 4-1-10, The Hill, Obamas Offshore Drilling Push Shakes Up Congressional Fight Over Climate
Change, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/90137-drilling-push-shakes-up-climate-fight-, accessed
7-7-13, HG]
Republicans were generally lukewarm at best to the Obama administration plan Wednesday,
and many attacked the proposal, calling it too modest. The plan also scuttles some proposed Alaska
lease sales.
White House spokesman Bill Burton largely deflected questions Wednesday about whether the drilling
push would help the push for climate change legislation.
I would say that its obviously a part of the climate legislation and the entire package that the
president is working with Congress to move forward, he said when asked about the implications of
the drilling plan on the Capitol Hill climate change debate.
So I would say that this is mostly about coming through on a promise that he made to the American
people that he would have a comprehensive energy plan that would include some increased domestic
production of energy but also some big investments in renewable technology, as well as finding ways to
promote efficiency and things like that. So all these things are connected, he added.
Something else to watch: Several lawmakers who support wider offshore drilling want the Senate
energy and climate bill to give coastal states a nice cut of what could be billions of dollars in leasing
and royalty revenue.
Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a centrist swing vote in the climate fight, on Wednesday applauded the plan to
proceed with leasing off Virginias coast but reiterated his call for Virginia to receive a share of the
money.
This policy should be coupled with a fair and equitable formula for profit-sharing between the federal
and state government in order to attract well-paying jobs to the commonwealth and support a range of
projects, from clean energy development to transportation infrastructure to coastal restoration, Webb
said.

Unpopular
Offshore drilling is unpopular with Democrat Senators and Oceana
Fisher, Oceana Editorial manager, 10
[Emily, 5-10-14, Oceana, Oceana Joins Senators in Opposition to New Drilling,
http://oceana.org/en/blog/2010/05/oceana-joins-senators-in-call-for-a-ban-on-new-offshore-drilling ,

Oceana CEO Andy Sharpless joined three Senators at a press conference on the oil spill yesterday,
and he called on President Obama and Congress to ban new offshore drilling.
"I will make it short and to the point," said Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida). "The president's proposal for
offshore drilling is dead on arrival. Senator Nelson was joined by New Jersey Democratic Senators
Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez.
The Senators also vowed to keep new oil drilling provisions out of any climate change legislation
that comes out of the Senate, and Senator Menendez has introduced new legislation to raise the limit
on the amount of money oil companies could be forced to pay for economic damages from
catastrophic oil spills.
While it is too late to avert the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it is not too late to learn from it, or to
put those lessons to work, said Sharpless. We must take immediate action and put in place longterm policies that put the health of coastal communities and ecosystems over the interests of the oil
lobby and industry profits.

Bipartisan Support for Offshore Drilling

Energy reform and continued offshore drilling popular jobs and energy security
Kelley, Research Analyst at Energy Acuity, 12
[Mike, 9-7-12, Energy Acuity, Energy Policys Impact on the 2012 Presidential Debate,
http://www.energyacuity.com/blog/bid/217770/Energy-Policy-s-Impact-on-the-2012-Presidential-Race,
accessed 7-7-13, HG]
A recent report by the Congressional Budget Office cites 70% of the nations oil and gas reserves as
available for drilling already, making it unclear as to the extent to which Romneys plan will increase
actual energy yields (3). An emphasis in off-shore exploration is expected to bolster our nations fuel
production but we must remain mindful of the potential for disaster, as shown by the recent Deepwater
Horizon tragedy. Romney notes that exploration in the Mid-Atlantic, which is currently prohibited, has
received continuous bipartisan support (4). Its worth noting that this support is from Virginia State
Senators, whose responsibility is primarily to their constituents. Sen. Jim Webb (D) mentions
improvements to his commonwealths economy as a primary reason to support development in the MidAtlantic. When discussing national energy policy, this inherent danger of porkbarrel politics, the
allocation of federal funds for use in largely localized projects, cannot be ignored. Even still, at our
current pace of development, the EIA (Energy Information Administration) predicts the US can
eliminate its net imports of natural gas and reduce imports of oil to 38% by 2020. A majority of the
necessary oil imports remaining will be sourced from Canada and Mexico, an idea that has
continually attracted bipartisan support (5). If were going to be approaching North American energy
independence by 2020 anyways, than the question becomes whether the actions proposed by Romney to
further accelerate domestic production are worth the potential externalities.
One key factor in achieving energy independence not discussed in this report is the fate of existing CAFE
(Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. President Obama implemented standards in May 2010
which aim to achieve a fuel economy of 34.5 mpg in model year 2016 vehicles. The EIA cites these new
standards as a contributing factor to the 124,000 barrel per day decrease in US gasoline consumption
during the first quarter of 2012 as compared to 2011. In an effort to continue this positive trend, this
summer President Obama implemented new standards aimed at improving nationwide fuel economy for
2017-2025 (54.5 mpg in model year 2025 vehicles) (6). The EIA predicts this new measure will save 1.4
million barrels of oil per day by 2035 when compared to a simple extension of the 2012-2016 standards
(7). This decision has been received with staunch opposition from the Republican Party, including the
new Presidential hopeful. Romney has been open in his opposition of the CAFE standards, stating that
they hurt domestic automakers and provided a benefit to some of the foreign automakers (8). Not only
would Romney be expected to rescind the new standards but could repeal the 2012-2016 standards which
have already had a tangible effect on foreign oil imports. Despite these accusations, the National Highway
Transportation Safety Administration expects these standards to reduce our consumption of oil by 4
billion barrels and the BlueGreen Alliance predicts an additional 570,000 jobs by 2030 as a result of
this policy (9). Certainly these standards present an opportunity to increase our energy

independence without the risks of increasing offshore drilling or opening federal lands for
exploration.
Offshore drilling and cooperation in the Gulf is popular and supported by

policymakers willing to cooperate on environmental standards
Hiar, former staff writer for the Center for Public Integrity, the Huffington Post,
and PBS MediaShift, 1/23/13
[Corbin, 1-23-13, SNL Electric Utility Report, New congressional push for oil, gas revenue sharing
includes renewable energy, Lexis, accessed 7-4-13, HG]
In addition to the renewable measures, the bill's authors are considering other options to gain
Democratic support. For Landrieu; Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.; and other lawmakers in states with
the potential for offshore oil and gas drilling, the bill would immediately entitle their constituents to
between 27.5% and 37.5% of energy production revenues, instead of having to wait until 2017 for
the second phase of the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act to take effect.
Landrieu, whose state has already collected more than $6 million from phase one of the revenue-sharing
law, is also pushing to remove the $500 million annual revenue cap included in the 2006 measure. "It's
there for budget scoring reasons," Dillon said. "But that's something that's being discussed."
The bill's sponsors also may be open to considering popular measures that were used to push
previous attempts at revenue sharing. Dillon said the authors would "be happy" to revisit the issue
of offshore drilling safety, but he said that since the reform measure died in 2011, the DOI and the
Obama administration "were able to do a lot of those things they wanted to do administratively."
He said, "So we're not sure at this moment if there's any need for legislation."
The clean energy trust fund also may be on the table. Murkowski also has talked to Wyden about "taking
another look at how we finance deployment of new technologies," Dillon said. However, he cautioned
that "we are still working with co-sponsors and Landrieu on the revenue sharing, so the details may
change, but this is just what the outline looks like at this moment."
Reaction to the prospective legislation from industry groups across the spectrum has so far been
cautiously optimistic. The American Petroleum Institute supports expanded offshore oil and gas
production, "and state revenue sharing should be a part of that equation," the trade group's upstream
director, Erik Milito, said in an email.
Solar Energy Industries Association President Rhone Resch said in an email that, "in general, we
are supportive of revenue sharing between the federal and state governments as it has worked well
for other energy sectors." The American Wind Energy Association did not immediately respond to a
request for comment. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved 18 solar energy projects on
federal land that, if built, will produce more than 6,100 MW of power, according to DOI figures. Since
2009, seven wind projects worth nearly 3,900 MW also have been approved; 566 MW of wind energy had
been approved on federal land prior to that.

The bill's sponsors remain confident that their efforts to broaden the appeal of revenue sharing to more
states and constituencies will help this latest measure secure passage in the 113th Congress. "We want to
move this legislation," Dillon said. "This isn't a message bill; this is something we think is important to
actually accomplish."

Bipartisan Support for Oil & Gas Development

Theres bipartisan support for oil and gas development
Straessle, API Spokesman, 6-5-13
[Brian, 6-05-13, American Petroleum Institute, Support for Expanding Offshore Energy Development Is
Broad, Bipartisan, http://www.api.org/news-and-media/news/newsitems/2013/june-2013/support-forexpanding-offshore-energy-development-is-broad-bipartisan, accessed 7-05-13, AMS]
There is broad and bipartisan support from the public and policymakers at the state and federal
level for expanding access to offshore oil and natural gas development, API Director of Upstream &
Industry Operations Erik Milito told reporters this afternoon:
The United States has an opportunity that few nations ever get. We have a chance to be a
dominant player in global energy markets and guarantee our energy security for decades ahead.
Achieving this feat must include tapping into oil and natural gas resources off our coasts in the
Atlantic, Pacific, the Arctic and eastern Gulf of Mexico.
There is broad support from both policymakers and the public, and we need to begin taking the
steps to ensure the nations long-term energy security. Offshore oil and natural gas production is a
long-term effort that requires long-term planning.
We urge President Obama to work with Congress, the states and the industry to take advantage of the
valuable opportunity presented by expanding access to offshore energy production and by expanding
revenue sharing for coastal states. The benefits for American families, businesses, and our long-term
energy security are too great to let this opportunity slip away.

Oil & Gas Lobby Supports Drilling

Plans popular with oil and gas lobbies outweighs the link
Porretto, Associated Press, 9
(John, 6/19/9, Associated Press, Oil lobby floods D.C.,
http://www.telegram.com/article/20090619/NEWS/906190443/1002, Accessed 7/9/13)
HOUSTON Oil and gas companies have accelerated their spending on lobbying faster than any
other industry, training their gusher of profits on Washington to fight new taxes on drilling and slow
efforts to move the nation off fossil fuels. The industry spent $44.5 million lobbying Congress and
federal agencies in the first three months of this year, on pace to shatter last year's record . Only the
drug industry spent more. Last year's total of $129 million was up 73 percent from two years earlier.
That's a faster clip than any other major industry, according to data from the Center for
Responsive Politics. From the late 1990s through the first half of this decade, the oil industry spent
roughly $50 million to $60 million a year on lobbying. It ramped up lobbying in 2006, when Democrats
retook Congress, and further as President Barack Obama took office. They're under attack, they're
ramping up their operations and they've got money to spend, said Tyson Slocum, who runs the
energy program at watchdog group Public Citizen. They're in a much better position than other
industries to draw upon financial resources for their lobbying effort. Billions of dollars in oil profits
in recent years have made the industry a target for new and higher taxes on exploration and drilling. Oil
companies and refiners are also trying to blunt the impact of costly climate change legislation pushed by
Obama. While most oil and gas executives acknowledge the nation needs cleaner energy, they say
lawmakers are misguided about how quickly it can happen. They warn that taxes and tighter rules on
exploration could cripple the industry before new technology is developed. Complex issues like that
require additional communication and effort to ensure lawmakers understand our positions, said Alan
Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company. Exxon
Mobil was the biggest spender in the first quarter, pumping $9.3 million into Washington three
times what it spent a year ago, according to House disclosure reports. In its House filing, Exxon
noted it lobbied on high-profile topics such as climate and tax legislation, as well as provisions regarding
the chemical industry, education and health care. Combined, the three largest U.S. oil companies
Exxon, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips spent about $22 million on lobbying in the first
quarter. Smaller, independent companies that produce the bulk of the nation's crude and natural
gas are spending millions, too. They're spending more even as profits have subsided. The big three
U.S. oil companies spent just $12.4 million on lobbying in the fourth quarter. First-quarter spending on
lobbying by the oil industry trailed only drugmakers and health products companies, which spent $66.6
million. I can tell you, I've had substantially more visits than usual, said Rep. Gene Green, whose south
Texas district is in the heart of oil country. Among his callers, he said, have been representatives of
ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil to discuss climate-change legislation and other matters. To a degree,
the investment appears to be paying off. On Wednesday, a Senate committee voted to lift a ban on
drilling across a vast area in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The provision, which the industry pushed for,
is included in a bill that would expand the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The
bill now goes to the full Senate. Democrats from oil states have also managed to get rid of a provision in

an anti-pollution bill to require refiners to meet a standard on low-carbon motor fuel. Refiners say the bill
would still be devastating to business. Most major industries have increased what they spend on
lobbying, but no one has done so at a faster clip over the past two years than oil and gas companies,
according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The enormous amount of money funneled
to Washington by energy companies comes after some members of Congress suggested slapping the big
oil companies with a windfall profits tax last year, when Americans were seething over $4-a-gallon gas.
Democrats who also took the majority of state legislatures and governorships in 2006
traditionally have not been as cozy with the oil sector as Republicans, and the energy lobby has
spent the past few years trying to make inroads. You'll often see a correlation between spending
and an industry or company that's in the hot seat, said Sheila Krumholz, the Center for
Responsive Politics' executive director. That will be enough to get them to hire additional guns
and direct more money to lobbying.

Resources

Resource Exploitation Costs Political Capital

Resource exploitation costs political capital
Biber, University of California Berkeley School of Law, 13
[Eric, 2013, Ecology and Society, The Challenge of Collecting and Using Environmental Monitoring
Data, http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss4/art68/#author_address, accessed 7/7/2014 CK]
Powerful political actors opposed to management changes can use residual uncertainty to argue that
monitoring data does not require management changes, even when monitoring data might be considered
effective by outside observers (Halbert 1993, Gunderson 2003b). These actors have at least four
advantages. First, inaction can be made more appealing by arguing that additional research is
required to narrow uncertainty (Walters 1997, Nichols and Williams 2006, Allen and Gunderson 2011).
Second, statistical analysis in monitoring programs often gives a significant advantage to parties
supporting the status quo. Because of the importance of uncertainty, decisions about the statistical
burden of proof, how to resolve questions about whether monitoring data indicates that
management should be changed, are often outcome determinative (Martin et al. 2009). Many
resource management agencies have emphasized the risk of type I errors, i.e., approving an action,
taken to be sound (true) based on the best science, that later proves to be unsound (false), even
though type II errors, the opposite dynamic, may be just as important (Stankey et al. 2005:27). This risk
aversion makes it hard to change management practices. Third, when the status quo involves significant
economic exploitation of a resource (often), decision makers tend to minimize information that
supports reducing exploitation. In fisheries management, when scientists give decision makers a
range of possible quotas for fishing, decision makers regularly and consistently set fishing quotas as
high as possible within that band of uncertainty (Eagle and Thompson 2003). This pressure to resolve
uncertainty in favor of economic development or exploitation derives from a number of sources, such as
the advantage that regulated interests often have in the political arena (Zinn 2002). Another important
factor is the need among economic interests for regulatory certainty (Ruhl 2008). Certainty will
create strong political resistance to changes in how much an environmental resource can be
exploited. Fourth, political and legal inertia often prevent changes to existing management and
regulatory systems (Lazarus 2009). An agency may simply not have enough legal authority, money,
or time to adequately review or analyze effective monitoring data, or to implement management
changes based on that data (Gregory et al. 2006, Doremus 2011). Inertia may make it difficult to
change the statutory or regulatory structures that inhibit agency action. Overcoming that inertia
requires political capital, time, and energy.

Fishing

Aquaculture Controversial
Aquaculture is politically unpopularempirically prove
Fry, Commercial Fisher, 13
[Christy, 2/26/13, Homer News; Republished on the website of Congressman Don Young, Young
Introduces Aquaculture Bill, http://donyoung.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?
DocumentID=322513, accessed 7/8/14, AC]
Alaska Congressman Don Young has introduced legislation that would prohibit the Secretary of
Interior and the Secretary of Commerce from authorizing commercial finfish aquaculture
operations in the federal Exclusive Economic Zone, from 3 to 200 miles from shore, unless specifically
"If not properly managed, farmed fish can be a significant threat to the health of Alaska's wild
stocks and the health of our oceans," Young said. "Alaska's seafood industry is one of the largest
employers in the state, and today's legislation will preserve Congress' prerogative to determine
what type of aquaculture programs should and should not be conducted in our waters and those
adjacent to our waters."
Congress has never authorized open ocean aquaculture or provided a legislative framework for
managing finfish farms in the EEZ, in spite of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
drawing up a 10-year plan in 2007 that had stated goals such as "By the end of 2007, develop policies,
guidelines and protocols for use in the review of proposed marine aquaculture facilities by NOAA
regional and program offices under current NOAA mandates."
The most recent activity on the NOAA aquaculture website involves funding opportunities for creating
biofuels from algea:
"As part of the Energy Department's efforts to develop transportation fuels that don't rely on petroleum,
they announced on January 16 up to $10 million available this year to help unlock the potential of
biofuels made from algae. The funding will support projects aimed at boosting the productivity of algae
and increasing the efficiency of algae harvesting technologies."
NOAA drew fire from commercial fishermen when it began aggressively promoting aquaculture in
federal waters, saying that spending taxpayer dollars to create a system that would lower prices for
wild-caught products was inherently unfair.
However, the spotty nature of the project appears to have diminished the immediate threat. Three
separate bills submitted to Congress in 2004, 2007 and 2009 failed to produce the regulatory
framework, failing to even move out of committee.
NOAA says that it has a commitment to developing sustainable aquaculture, although its definition of
"sustainable" is not found in any of its literature.

Fishing Regulation Unpopular

Fishing regulations are unpopular among coastal communities threaten job
security
Rep. Fleming, R-Louisiana, 12
[Rep. John Fleming, US Representative 4th Congressional District of Louisiana and chairman of the
Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs, 3/30/12, The Hill,
National Ocean Policy is an executive power grab, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-aenvironment/219309-national-ocean-policy-is-an-executive-power-grab, accessed 7/9/14, GNL]
Perhaps the simplest way to describe this policy and council is to envision a national zoning board
for oceans and all of the inland communities and activities that might affect the oceans. Youve
probably dealt with a local zoning board that keeps order between residential neighborhoods and busy
commercials areas. You may not always agree with their decisions, but we can all appreciate local control
over such matters.
President Obamas National Ocean Policy takes zoning to a massive scale, giving Washington pencil
pushers more power to decide what activities are acceptable in the ocean zones they create. And
when federal agencies are authorizing activities, the converse can be assumed: they will close off
other activities, and limit authorized activities only to approved zones. The uncertainty that results
will further limit economic growth.
Coastal communities have already felt the pain of tough economic times. Fishermen are having a hard
time making ends meet and many are seeing their harvest levels reduced, while their cost of doing
business continues to rise. The House subcommittee I chair has heard testimony describing how harvest
levels have been driven down by the lack of agency-funded stock assessments and the closing of fishing
grounds. Now, this proposed new policy threatens to take more money from fishery surveys, and will
create more closures.
To make matters worse, this new National Ocean Policy will reach far inland with new zoning plans,
and could use ocean water quality as a way of threatening even farming and forestry practices.
The presidents plan enhances uncertainty by giving precedent to ecosystem health over the
economic impact of human activities, even if those activities were previously authorized or occurring in
an area. That means government bureaucrats, working behind closed doors, may decide that their views
on climate change or water quality both priorities in the policy will win out over the longstanding
interests of people who have depended for decades on the oceans and waterways for their livelihood.
Imagine putting those decisions, along with the vague and undefined policy goals of the executive order,
in the hands of special interest groups whose agenda is to abolish virtually all human activity. The
litigation and court challenges will be endless, and the permits that fishermen and coastal
businesses need to continue making a living will be hard to come by.
The presidents plan, which has flown under the transparency and accountability radar, lists nearly 60
milestones for federal agencies to accomplish this year as they implement the policy, with another 92

milestones slated for 2013. Yet no federal agency has requested funding for these activities. That means
existing missions and management activities of several federal agencies will be put at risk because federal
dollars will be re-purposed to support this policy.
President Obamas National Ocean Policy should be authorized by specific legislation and funded through
the regular appropriations process. Implementing this power grab through an executive order, with funds
diverted from other Congressionally-appropriated programs is simply wrong. Existing laws already
manage fisheries, and we dont need a costly, massive, new, job-destroying layer of bureaucracy to
centralize more power in Washington, and jeopardize the liberties of hard-working citizens. Until
Congress receives answers to the questions we have asked about the authority and funding for this
National Ocean Policy, I will continue to oppose this policy.

Whaling

Whaling Controversial
Whaling exemption, including process by which it is achieved, massively
controversial, ensuring debate about the plan
Kamb, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5
[Lewis, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3-20-5, Makah try long shot: asking Congress to allow whale hunts,
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Makah-try-long-shot-asking-Congress-to-allow-1169021.php,
accessed 7-10-14, AFB]
Tribe's whalers await chance to hunt again

Already pursuing an obscure administrative waiver in its struggle to one day hunt whales again, the
Makah Indian Nation is now also exploring its options on another front: Congress.
During a recent visit to the nation's capital, tribal officials informally raised to members of Washington's
congressional delegation the idea of seeking a bill to allow an exception for Makah whale hunts.
"We've just talked to them a little at this point," Makah Chairman Ben Johnson Jr. said last week.
"Whether anything will come of it, who knows?"
Such discussions -- still embryonic, at best -- have yet to yield any promises of support. There is no such
bill now, nor any guarantees from lawmakers that there ever will be one.
In fact, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., already appears to be somewhat distancing herself from any
potential proposal to allow for a tribal whaling exception.
"It is very unlikely that she would try to use the Senate to force this issue," Cantwell spokeswoman
Charla Neuman said last week.
The Makah have a whaling tradition that dates back some 2,000 years, but the tribe suspended its whale
hunts in the 1920s -- in part because the commercial whaling industry had hunted gray whales nearly to
extinction.
In 1994, with the mammals' numbers rebounding, the federal government removed the gray whale from
the endangered species list. And the tribe began taking steps to whale again.
The Makah -- with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- eventually won
a small annual harvest quota from the International Whaling Commission. In 1999, tribal whalers
successfully brought in the tribe's first whale in more than 70 years.
Animal protection activists soon sued the tribe and its federal backers, winning a string of legal
victories to stop the hunts.
In its most recent opinion, the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that NOAA should have
conducted a more stringent environmental analysis before endorsing the hunts. The court also ruled that,
before the tribe can legally hunt again, it must first seek and win an exception to the Marine Mammal
Protection Act.

The 1972 federal law generally prohibits anyone in the United States from harming gray whales or
other sea mammals.
The Makah had argued that because they had an explicit right to hunt whales in their 1855 treaty with the
U.S. government, the tribe wasn't subject to the law.
But the court disagreed. And instead of appealing to the Supreme Court and risking the chance of setting
bad precedent for other tribes, the Makah opted to comply with the ruling last month by filing an
application with NOAA for a waiver to the law.
Winning such an exception -- a pursuit that could take two years or more of administrative hearings and
paperwork -- has never happened before, officials say.
While that process moves ahead, the Makah are considering what might be their only other option:
congressional help.
Tribal representatives met individually late last month with Cantwell, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and
U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., among others, to discuss the possibility of seeking a whaling exception
through federal legislation.
Alaskan Natives, who don't have treaty rights, are allowed to hunt whales under an exception that was
written into the mammal protection law when it was enacted more than 30 years ago. So why shouldn't
the Makah -- the only Native American tribe with an express treaty right to whale -- also be exempt from
the law? "We just think it's unfair," said John Arum, the tribe's attorney.
Some opponents of the tribe's hunts actually may prefer that the Makah receive a whaling
exception through Congress rather than winning one through an administrative process, Arum
added. The latter would be a first-of-its-kind waiver that some opponents have said could open the
doors to others who may want to seek to whale.
But Naomi Rose, a marine mammal biologist for the Humane Society of the United States -- among the
coalition of opponents that sued to stop the Makah's hunts -- said either scenario is unacceptable.
"For us, it's a real simple equation: We do not want them hunting gray whales again, period," she said.
The animal protection group has since voiced its concerns to Washington's congressional delegation
over any potential tribal whaling bill -- even though activists foresee the tribe's legislative prospects
to be unlikely.
"To get an amendment to the law like that passed, you have to have an awful lot of friends on the
Hill," Rose said. "We don't think they have enough."

Coral Reefs

Preservation Controversial
Coral reef preservation leads to backlash and fightseverybody hates it
Golden, Daily Beast, 14
[Abigail, 6/23/14, The Daily Beast, Republicans: Obamas Ocean Protection Plan Evidence of Imperial
Presidency, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/23/republicans-obama-s-ocean-
protection-plan-evidence-of-imperial-presidency.html, accessed 7/9/14, AC]
President Obama announced last week that he plans to add massive amounts of territory to the
Remote Pacific Islands National Marine Monument, a tract of ocean surrounding seven hard-to-reach
islands and atolls in the south-central Pacific Ocean. Obamas decision will expand the original reserve,
created by George W. Bush in the last days of his presidency, by almost five times its original size. The
expanded national monument will quintuple the number of seamounts, or underwater mountains, under
federal protection, and close almost 780,000 square miles of ocean to tuna fishing.
Obamas decision has been hailed for its conservation impact by scientists and even by the New York
Times editorial board. Gareth Williams, a researcher at Scripps who studies the coral reefs within the
reserve, hailed the expanded national monument as protecting some of the most intact natural areas left
on the planet. Its almost impossible to find another example of that, forests included, Williams told The
Daily Beast. There are always examples of degradation, but there are very few examples of ecosystems
left that are thatpristine.
But plenty of people arent happy with Obamas decision, and the next few monthsin which the
exact details of the expansion will be up for reviewmay be contentious ones. These are the groups that
have most at stake in opposing the expanded Remote Pacific Islands reserve:
1. Republican lawmakers
Obamas use of an executive order to establish the reserve expansion angered Republicans in
government, who viewed it as an attempt to test the limits of White House authority. Congressman Doc
Hastings (R-Wash.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, was quick to
denounce Obama as an Imperial President who is intent on taking unilateral action, behind closed
doors, to impose new regulations and layers of restrictive red-tape.
By Hastings standards, another candidate for an imperial presidency would be George W. Bush, who
created four marine national monuments during his time in office.
By Hastings standards, then, another candidate for an imperial presidency would be George W. Bush,
who created four marine national monuments during his time in office, totaling some 300,000 square
miles of protected ocean.
2. The commercial fishing industry.
Currently, about 3 percent of the U.S. tuna catch in the western and southern Pacific comes from the area
now under protection, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. Congressman Hastings has criticized

Obama for closing this area to tuna fishing, cautioning that this move will make the U.S. tuna fleet
even less viable, meaning that in the not-too-distant future all of Americas tuna will be caught by foreign
vessels.
Paul Dalzell, a senior scientist with the Western and Central Pacific Regional Fisheries Management
Council, echoed this industry-centric approach. The islands [in the reserve] already have 50-nauticalmile boundaries around them to protect all the coral reef and shallow water habitats, so theyre more than
adequately protected already, Dalzell told The Daily Beast. But for migratory species like tuna, he
argues, large-scale ocean reserves have little conservation value, since tuna simply swim beyond the
boundaries of the closed areas to be caught by other fleets. The reserve has no major conservation
benefits, will penalize U.S. fishermen, and theres no net gain, Dalzell continued.
Its worth noting that Pew Charitable Trusts, which works on ocean conservation issues, has condemned
the Western and Central Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council for its poor fisheries practices,
which it claims are hastening overfishing in the Pacific region.
3. Recreational fishers.
After Bush first established the Remote Pacific Islands reserve in 2009, the American Sportfishing
Association successfully petitioned for a recreational fishing exemption within the reserve. Now the
group, which represents manufacturers of fishing tackle rather than sport fishermen themselves, plans to
push for the exemption to apply throughout the expanded area.
We believe in almost all instances you can still have marine conservation and make sure that your
fisheries resources are in good, healthy condition, and still allow some recreational fishing to take
place, Mike Leonard, a spokesperson for the ASA, told The Daily Beast. The groups insistence on a
recreational fishing exemption is mostly academic, since the areas within the expanded reserve are so
remote as to be unreachable to sport fishermen. Williams, who has traveled to the reserve repeatedly for
his research, said that he has never seen a recreational fishing boat there.
Coral reef preservation is unpopulardraws fire from a variety of groups

Russell, Fox News Channel executive editor, 7/9/14
[George, 7/9/14, Fox News, Fishing in murky waters: the administrations secretive oceans policies
come under fire, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/09/fishing-in-murky-waters-
administrations-secretive-oceans-policies-come-under/?intcmp=latestnews, accessed 7/9/14, AC]
American fishermen are reacting with skepticism, concern and frustration at the latest murky steps
to prevent fishing in vast tracts of the Pacific. The proposed expansion was announced along with
other White House ocean conservation initiatives on June 16, as the kickoff to a two-day State
Department conference aimed at greater international coordination to overcome a variety of ocean ills,
including not only overfishing, but marine pollution and ocean acidification -- the last linked by
conservationists to global carbon emissions and climate change.
CLICK HERE FOR THE INITIATIVES

The announcements, and the oceans conference itself, also serve a broader purpose: to link a
sweeping and controversial U.S. oceans policy the administration began implementing last year
with broader international efforts to achieve more ambitious sustainable goals at sea, along the
worlds coastlines and in the atmosphere by 2020.
The lack of information extends to the current announcement, which is dramatic in tone but not very
concrete in detail. According to the administrations announcement, it will immediately consider how to
expand protections in the affected Pacific areas, a formulation that leaves plenty of room for maneuvering
on the initiatives, even as a State Department spokesman told Fox News that our goal is to implement
them as quickly as possible.
The additional areas marked for preservation are located around the Pacific Remote Islands Marine
National Monument, a 77,000 square mile area south and west of Hawaii that was created as a preserve
by President George W. Bush in 2006, two-and-a-half years before Barack Obama took office.
All of this is a terrible, terrible abuse of power.
- Doc Hastings, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
According to the White House, the area contains some of the most pristine tropical marine environments
in the world, which are also among the most vulnerable areas to the impacts of climate change and
ocean acidification.
The current monument area extends about 50 miles out from the speckling of islands that are considered
U.S. territory, where commercial fishing and all manner of marine dumping are forbidden. The
administrations proposal would likely seek to extend the preserve to the internationally recognized 200
mile Exclusive Economic Zone around the U.S. territories, and expand the monument area about ten-fold,
to roughly 782,000 sq. miles.
But even there, the administration remains cagey. Before making decisions about the geographic scope
and details of future marine protections, the White House announced, we will consider the input of
fishermen, scientists, conservation experts, elected officials and other stakeholders.
That kind of tactical elusiveness is something that congressional Republicans have long found
frustrating, as they tried to block funding for the overall ocean policy, charging that the initiative has
never received legislative approval, is not subject to congressional oversight, and that its costs, scope and
sources of funding have never been revealed.
All of this is a terrible, terrible abuse of power, charges Doc Hastings, the chairman of the House
Committee on Natural Resources. The president is ruling by executive order, by fiat. Policy on oceans
should come through Congress. This is really an example of the administration simply not giving
information on what it is doing.
For its part, the administration has declared that no additional funding beyond regular department budgets
is being used to implement the overall oceans policy, and it has made no announcements about additional
staffing related to the implementation.
The same holds true for the administrations National Oceans Implementation Plan, released in April
2013. The policy does not create new regulations, supersede current regulations, or modify any agencys
established mission, jurisdiction or authority, the document relates. Nor does it redirect congressionally-

appropriated funds, or direct agencies to divert funds from existing programsall things that might
trigger the legal need for congressional approval.
Instead, it improves interagency collaboration and prioritization to help focus limited resources and use
taxpayer dollars more efficiently.
Yet, at the same time, the plan calls for sweeping restoration of coastal wetlands and coral reefs, an
increase in the number of students pursuing marine science and management careers, the use of enhanced
sensing systems to examine what it happening in oceans in real time, the carrying out of countless studies,
and myriad other activities that normally cost large amounts of additional money.

Artificial Reefs Controversial

Artificial reefs are unpopular and create controversy
Stewart, Santa Barbara Independent, 12
[Ethan, 7/26/12, Santa Barbara Independent, Artificial Reef Project Moves Forward despite
Controversy, http://www.independent.com/news/2012/jul/26/artificial-reef-project-movesforward-despite-cont/, accessed 7/9/14, AC]
However, despite this, the structures are not without controversy. After all, any time something
large and manmade gets put in the ocean, there is always the chance for disaster. As Teufel who,
in his position as an Environmental Scientist for the Coastal Commissions Ocean Resources
Division, has had ample experience with similar projectsputs it, It is not as simple as just
chucking some materials down and getting kelp and fish populations to move in. There is quite a bit of
scientific legwork required and a very lengthy permitting process that includes everyone from us to the
State Lands Commission to the Army Corps of Engineers to Fish and Game.
Other concerns held by groups such as the Environmental Defense Center and Santa Barbara
Channelkeeper include the potential for an inappropriately sited artificial reef to cause a fish
population sink or crash at nearby naturally occurring habitats or the luring of wildlife away from the
safe haven of existing marine protected areas to unrestricted waters.
Given these worries, when word spread late last month that Goldblatt had already installed a pair
of reef balls without really reaching out to the nearby environmental community or the various
regulatory agencies, not only did the collective neckhairs of Santa Barbaras various ocean watchdog
groups stand straight up, but the Coastal Commissions enforcement wing also opened up an
official investigation and has since declared, via a written notice, that the two balls meet the definition of
development under the Coastal Act and now must seek after-the-fact approval or be removed.

Port Dredging

Dredging Controversial
Port dredging is empirically unpopularconcerns over earmarking funding
Gale, South Florida Business Journal Chief Editor, 12
[Kevin, 2/14/12, South Florida Business Journal, Port dredging is a hot topic in D.C,
http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/blog/2012/02/port-dredging-is-hot-topic-in-dc.html,
accessed 7/9/14, AC]
Some members of Congress are starting to get antsy about getting East Coast harbors dredged to
accommodate post-Panamax ships.
While PortMiami has $77 million in state funding to help launch its project, ports further north are
fighting for federal funding.
In his Fine Print column in The Washington Post on Tuesday, Walter Pincus tells how the Senate
Armed Services Committee grilled Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick, who has been nominated to lead
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (Bostick is already facing a roadblock from Sen. Rand Paul, RKy., over repairs on a dam in his home state.)
The problem for ports and their congressmen is that earmarks aren't supposed to happen anymore,
and that's a classic way for port dredging projects to get funded.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., has concerns about the Port of Savannah, the column says.
Ive visited Savannah, and the port complex is impressive in size and has grown rapidly. A major issue,
though, is that it's located on a river, and experts have told me it's more expensive to maintain depth
because of silt carried by currents. The Army Corps has some preliminary funding for the port, but
the Post account indicates events are moving slowly.
Port dredging is unpopularcreates a political firestorm

Kinnard, Associated Press, 12
[Meg, 7/14/12, Associated Press, Panel set up to represent SC wades into court ,
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2012-07-14/panel-set-represent-sc-wades-court, accessed
7/9/14, AC]
The commission tasked with representing South Carolina's interests when it comes to dredging the
Savannah River has taken on a higher profile as it wades into several legal disputes over the $650
million project.

The Savannah River Maritime Commission had operated quietly since it was set up in 2007 as part of
legislators' response to a lawsuit over a proposed port in Jasper County. That lawsuit was ultimately
dismissed. But the panel _ comprised of 12 appointed members ranging from the chairmen of various
legislative committees to designees from the governor and other state agencies _ stayed intact,
empowered to negotiate and enter into agreements on South Carolina's behalf.
Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Bonneau, who sits on the panel as chairman of the Senate Transportation
Committee, said the original plan was for Georgia to set up a similar commission. The plan was for the
two groups would negotiate issues affecting both states. But that never happened.
Now, with the Jasper project languishing, the South Carolina panel is fighting for the state to have a say
in a controversial project to deepen the Savannah River. And it's taking on a higher-profile role
amid a firestorm surrounding a project permit approved by state environmental officials, Grooms
said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed a plan to dredge and deepen the Savannah River
to accommodate the higher traffic and bigger ships that will accompany the expansion of the
Panama Canal in 2014. Last year, South Carolina's Department of Health and Environmental Control
board granted Georgia the necessary water quality permits.
The decision reversed a rejection from its staff, which had cited unacceptable harm to the waterway's
endangered sturgeon and fragile marshes. The board's approval came only after Georgia Gov. Nathan
Deal made a last-minute visit to discuss the issue with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who
appoints the board's members.

Icebreakers

Icebreakers Controversial
Icebreakers are unpopularspending and connection to global warming
Holland, American Security Project Energy and Climate Senior Fellow, 13
[Andrew, 9-26-13, Alaska Dispatch News, America is failing to meet challenges of a changing Arctic,
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130926/america-failing-meet-challenges-changingarctic, accessed 7/9/14, AC]
Finally, we need a military presence in order to maintain the security in our sea lanes and to provide for
disaster response. Today, neither the U.S. Navy nor the U.S. Coast Guard have the infrastructure,
the ships, or the political ambition to be able to sustain surface operations in the Arctic (the Navy
regularly operates submarines beneath the surface on strategic patrols). The United States Coast Guard
only has one medium ice-breaker in service today, the Healy. The heavy icebreaker Polar Star is
undergoing sea trials for its return to service after an extensive retrofit, but she is over 36 years old,
well beyond her intended 30-year service life. The Coast Guards proposed FY14 budget includes $2
million for plans for a new icebreaker, but purchasing one could cost over $800 million. In todays
federal budget environment, even the $2 million outlay is uncertain.
In contrast, Russias defense commitment to the region is extensive; it controls the largest icebreaker fleet
in the world, and is currently constructing what will be the worlds largest nuclear-powered icebreaker.
Russias largest naval fleet is its Arctic fleet, headquartered in Severomorsk off of the Barents Sea, and
President Putin has publicly committed to expanding their naval presence.
Perhaps it is because of the political paralysis on climate policy in Congress and in state
governments that it is impossible to have a rational debate about the impacts of climate change. So
long as a large portion of our political system refuses to acknowledge the very existence climate
change -- even in the face of clear evidence across Alaska, we will not be able to make the
investments necessary to take advantage of a changing Arctic.

LOST

GOP Opposition
Huge Republican opposition past rallies against prove
Thiessen, former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, 12
[Marc A., writer for The Post and former chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush and Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a former senior aide to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman
Jesse Helms, 7-16-12, Washington Post, Portman, Ayotte kill the Law of the Sea Treaty,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/portman-ayotte-kill-the-law-of-the-seatreaty/2012/07/16/gJQADpJEpW_blog.html, accessed 7-9-14, AAZ]
Conservatives have long opposed the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The
treaty would create a new global governance institution (known ominously as The Authority) that
would regulate U.S. citizens and American businesses without being accountable to the American
people or their elected leaders.
During the Clinton administration, my old boss, the late former Senate Foreign Relations Committee
chairman Jesse Helms, declared the treaty dead on arrival. But with the arrival of the Obama
administration, and with Democrats in control of the Senate, there has been a renewed push to ratify
the treaty.
Those efforts suffered a setback last week when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
announced that he would oppose ratification . That meant 32 Senate Republicans had either
publicly opposed, or signed letters declaring their intention to vote against, the Law of the Sea
Treaty. Opponents needed just two more Republicans to declare their opposition to reach the 34
votes necessary to kill it.
Those final two votes came through this afternoon, when Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Kelly
Ayotte (R-N.H.) wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declaring their intention to vote
against the treaty . As one might expect from Portman and Ayotte, the letter delivers a studious
examination of the costs and the benefits of ratification, and then concludes:
We are deeply concerned about the treatys breadth and ambiguity, the inadequate U.S. input in the
treatys adjudicative bodies, and the automatic enforcement of tribunal judgments in the United States.
No international organization owns the seas, and we are confident that our nation will continue to
protect its navigational freedom, valid territorial claims, and other maritime rights. On balance, we
believe the treatys litigation exposure and impositions on U.S. sovereignty outweigh its potential
benefits. For that reason, we cannot support the Law of the Sea treaty and would oppose its ratification.
Translation: Dead on arrival.
No doubt the news will bolster Ayottes standing as a rising conservative leader in the Senate. And it will
certainly raise Portmans standing in the veepstakes, as he wins well-deserved plaudits from national
security conservatives for putting the final stake into the coffin of this long-despised U.N. power-grab.
(Disclosure: My wife is Portmans legislative director.)

Somewhere up there, Jesse Helms is smiling.
LOST already failed once opposition by Republican Senators sparks fights

Wright, Politico, 12
[Austin, 7-16-13, POLITICO, Law of the Sea treaty sinks in Senate,
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78568.html, accessed 7-7-14, AAZ]
It appears the Law of the Sea treaty is dead in the water at least in this Congress.
Two Republican senators declared their opposition on Monday to the international agreement,
bringing the total number of Senate opponents to 34 enough to sink the measure. A two-thirds majority
of 67 votes was required for ratification.
Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) pushed the opposition movement over the
top, citing concerns about U.S. sovereignty.
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-Nev.), the two Armed Services Committee
members declared: No international organization owns the seas .
We are confident that our nation will continue to protect its navigational freedom, valid territorial
claims and other maritime rights, they said.

Treaties

Treaties Controversial
Approving any international treaty is massively unpopularnationalist backlash
Kaye, Penn State Law Professor, 13
[David, September/October 2013, Stealth Multilateralism, Foreign Affairs, 92: 5, 113-124,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139649/david-kaye/stealth-multilateralism, AC]
The U.S. Senate rejects multilateral treaties as if it were sport. Some it rejects outright, as when it
voted against the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities in 2012 and the
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1999. Others it rejects through inaction: dozens of
treaties are pending before the Senate, pertaining to such subjects as labor, economic and cultural
rights, endangered species, pollution, armed conflict, peacekeeping, nuclear weapons, the law of the
sea, and discrimination against women. Often, presidents dont even bother pushing for
ratification, since they know the odds are long: under the U.S. Constitution, it takes only one-third of
the Senate to reject a treaty.
The United States commitment problem has grown so entrenched that foreign governments no longer
expect Washingtons ratification or its full participation in the institutions treaties create. The world is
moving on; laws get made elsewhere, with limited (if any) American involvement. The United States still
wields influence in the UN Security Council and in international financial and trade institutions, where it
enjoys a formal veto or a privileged position. But when it comes to solving global problems beyond the
old centers of diplomatic and economic power, the United States suffers the self-inflicted wound of
diminishing relevance. Administrations operate under the shadow of Senate rejectionism, harboring
low expectations that their work will be ratified.
The foundation of the Senates posture is the belief, widespread among conservative Republicans,
that multilateral treaties represent a grave threat to American sovereignty and democracy. Treaties,
they argue, create rules that interfere with the democratic process by allowing foreigners to make
law that binds the United States. These sovereigntists portray treaties as all constraint, no
advantage, as Jon Kyl, Douglas Feith, and John Fonte did recently in these pages (The War of Law,
July/August 2013). These Republicans automatically resist, in the words of the 2012 GOP platform,
treaties that weaken or encroach upon American sovereignty. And because such a small group of
senators can block any given treaty, they essentially control ratification.

Agencies

Executive Actions Spend Political Capital

Executive agencies have to spend political capital
Cooney, Washington DC based Lawyer, 10
[John, 11/3/2010, Inside Council, Regulatory: The Obama Regulatory Agenda After the Elections,
http://www.insidecounsel.com/2010/11/03/the-obama-regulatory-agenda-after-the-elections, accessed
7/7/2014 CK]
Republican capture of control of the House of Representatives has changed the mechanisms
through which the Obama Administration will pursue its regulatory policy objectives and ensures
that disputes between the political parties over regulations will be a recurring feature of the run-up to the
2012 elections.
Until November 2nd, the President led by obtaining landmark legislation from a Congress
dominated by his party, and he had little need for concern about legislative oversight of his
Administration's initiatives. The President has now lost the opportunity to obtain legislation
granting him broad additional authority. He will have to advance his policies through unilateral
Executive Branch actions, such as issuance of regulations, executive orders, heightened enforcement
and aggressive interpretation of existing laws. The heads of Executive agencies also will have to
reallocate their time and political capital to defend the inevitable House oversight hearings on
controversial programs.

Executive Action Avoids Congressional Fight

Executive order solves environment legislation- avoids gridlock
Migliaccio, Vermont Supreme Court Legal Extern, 14
[Emily, JD Doctor of Law, 2014, THE NATIONAL OCEAN POLICY: CAN IT REDUCE MARINE
POLLUTION AND STREAMLINE OUR OCEAN BUREAUCRACY?,
http://vjel.vermontlaw.edu/files/2014/04/Migliaccio_FORPRINT1.pdf, Issue 3, Volume:15, Pages 646647, accessed 6/26/14, CK]
In the face of Congressional gridlock, executive orders may be necessary, particularly to advancing
pro-environmental policies. As legal scholar Sandra Zellmer argues, [t]he bitterly partisan nature
of environmental issues in Congress today suggests that comprehensive, thoughtful reforms tailored
to the problems faced by modern society are unlikely.134 Further, Zellmer points out that even if
todays Congress were to take up the call to reform existing statutes, it may be more likely to
dismantle provisions disliked by powerful, regulated entities than to pass comprehensive, forwardthinking legislation designed to solve contemporary environmental problems. 135 Thus, with an
essentially incompetent Congress, Zellmer proposes that non-legislative action, such as issuing an
executive order, may offer an opportunity to work around the congressional logjam and move the
environmental ball forward.136

Bipartisan Support for NOAA

Bipartisan support for NOAA
Jones, American Institute of Physics Government Relations Division Reporter,
4/3/14
(Richard, 4/3/14, American Institute of Physics Government Relations Division Reporter, American
Institute of Physics, House Passes Bipartisan Bill to Reorganize NOAAs Weather Resources,
http://aip.org/fyi/2014/house-passes-bipartisan-bill-reorganize-noaa%E2%80%99s-weather-resources,
accessed 6/29/14, BCG)
Saving lives and protecting property should be the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations
top priority. This bill codifies that priority, said Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) as he explained the
objectives of this legislation to his House colleagues. Bridenstine introduced this bill, H.R. 2413, in
June 2013. The month before Moore, Oklahoma was hit by a massive tornado that killed 24 people
and injured 377. Joining Bridenstine in cosponsoring this bill and reflecting its bipartisan nature
were twenty other representatives, including the chairman and ranking minority member of the House
Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
The Science Committee voted to send this legislation to the full House after a quick markup session in
early December. Then, as was true during Tuesdays floor action, the bipartisan nature of the bill
was emphasized. The bill has now been sent to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation. Selections from the House floor debate, in the order of presentation, follow:
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (T-TX):
Severe weather routinely affects large portions of the United States. This past year has been no different.
The United States needs a world-class weather prediction system that helps protect American lives and
property.
Our leadership has slipped in severe weather forecasting. European weather models routinely
predict Americas weather better than we can. We need to make up for lost ground. H.R. 2413
improves weather observation systems and advances computing and next generation modeling
capabilities. The enhanced prediction of major storms is of great importance to protecting the public from
injury and loss of property. and advances computing and next generation modeling capabilities. The
enhanced prediction of major storms is of great importance to protecting the public from injury and loss
of property.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR):
Members on both sides of the aisle can be assured that this bill represents a truly bipartisan effort
and is built on extensive discussions with and advice from the weather community.
We drew on expert advice from the weather enterprise and from extensive reports from the National
Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration. Experts told us that, to
improve weather forecasting, the research at the Office of Oceans and Atmospheric Research, or

OAR, and the forecasting at the National Weather Service had to be better coordinated. This
legislation contains important provisions to improve that coordination. This bill encourages NOAA to
integrate research and operations in a way that models the successful innovation structure used by
the Department of Defense.

Courts

Court Decisions Controversial

Court decisions are politicizedcomparatively outweighs their defense
Hamilton, Stanford J.D. Candidate, 12
[Eric, 8/30/12, Politicizing the Supreme Court, 65 Stanford Law Review 35,
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/politicizing-supreme-court, AC]
To state the obvious, Americans do not trust the federal government, and that includes the Supreme
Court. Americans believe politics played too great a role in the recent health care cases by a
greater than two-to-one margin.[1] Only thirty-seven percent of Americans express more than some
confidence in the Supreme Court.[2]Academics continue to debate how much politics actually
influences the Court, but Americans are excessively skeptical. They do not know that almost half of
the cases this Term were decided unanimously, and the Justices voting pattern split by the political party
of the president to whom they owe their appointment in fewer than seven percent of cases.[3] Why the
mistrust? When the Court is front-page, above-the-fold news after the rare landmark decision or
during infrequent U.S. Senate confirmation proceedings, political rhetoric from the President and
Congress drowns out the Court. Public perceptions of the Court are shaped by politicians
arguments for or against the ruling or the nominee, which usually fall along partisan lines and
sometimes are based on misleading premises that ignore the Courts special, nonpolitical responsibilities.
The Framers of the Constitution designed a uniquely independent Supreme Court that would safeguard
the Constitution. They feared that the political branches might be able to overwhelm the Court by turning
the public against the Court and that the Constitutions strict boundaries on congressional power would
give way. As evidenced in the health care cases, politicians across the ideological spectrum have
played into some of the Framers fears for the Constitution by politicizing the decision and erasing
the distinction between the Courts holding and the policy merits of the heath care law.
Paradoxically, many of the elected officials who proudly campaign under the battle cry of saving our
Constitution endanger the Court and the Constitution with their bombast. Politicization of the Supreme
Court causes the American public to lose faith in the Court, and when public confidence in the
Court is low, the political branches are well positioned to disrupt the constitutional balance of
power between the judiciary and the political branches.
Media spin ensures politicizationthe court has no popular influence

Hamilton, Stanford J.D. Candidate, 12
[Eric, 8/30/12, Politicizing the Supreme Court, 65 Stanford Law Review 35,
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/politicizing-supreme-court, AC]
Judges lack clear defenses. Judges would risk their credibility if they shouted back at the President,
appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows, or held a press conference after a decision. Unlike

speeches from members of Congress and the President, Supreme Court proceedings are difficult to
follow without legal training. The media coverage of the Supreme Court can be incomplete or
inaccurate. FOX News and CNN famously misunderstood Chief Justice Roberts oral opinion and
misreported that the individual mandate had been invalidated. The publicly available audio recordings
of oral arguments contribute little to public understanding of the Court. Even before the decision,
the Republican Party doctored audio clips of Solicitor General Don Verrilli coughing and pausing
during oral argument to suggest in an ad suggesting that the health care law was indefensible.[17]
Congress gets the blame for unpopular judicial decisions

Canon, Kentucky Political Science Professor and Johnson, Oklahoma Appellate
Judge, 99
[Bradley C and Charles A, Judicial Policies: Implementation and Impact, 116-117, AC]
More than any other public agency, Congress tends to be the focal point for public reaction to judicial
policies. As a political body, Congress cannot ignore any sizable or prominent groups of constituents.
Some groups become especially agitated when they are unhappy with some judicial decision or
doctrine, and they make their dissatisfaction known to members of Congress. If the pressure is great
enough and is not counterbalanced by pressure from groups that support the judicial policy, Congress
will, if feasible, take action. At the very least, numerous members of Congress will score political points
by showing righteous indignation on behalf of the disaffected groups.
Supreme Court decisions influence the agenda

Flemming, Texas A&M Polysci Professor, et al., 97
[Roy B., John Bohte, UW-Milwaukee Polysci Professor, and B. Dan Wood, Texas A&M Polysci
Professor, Oct 1997, One Voice Among Many: The Supreme Courts Influence on Attentiveness
to Issues in the United States 1947-92, American Journal of Political Science, 41: 4, 1224-1250,
http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/PLSC541_Fall06/Flemming%20Bohte%20and%20Wood
%20AJPS%201997.pdf, AC]
In this study we focus on the United States Supreme Court as a bellwether of systemic attention to policy
issues. In Federalist 78, Hamilton offered his by now famous and often repeated opinion that the Court
would be "the least dangerous branch." Without the power of the sword or purse at its disposal, the
Court's authority in American politics would ultimately depend on its ability to persuade. The Supreme
Court, however, may be more effective in drawing attention to issues and identifying problems than
in changing preferences about them (cf. Franklin and Kosaki 1989; Hoekstra 1995). The judicial venue
may increase issue visibility and legitimacy for issue advocates. As with other United States political
institutions, Supreme Court decisions confer and remove benefits, both material and symbolic, and
can under some circumstances rearrange the distribution of political influence. When decisions

rearrange political benefits and influence, the response is predictably a continuation of conflict.
Decisions that rearrange political benefits or influence in the extreme, as for example in cases
involving school desegregation, flag-burning, or public school prayer, often expand the scope of conflict
by activating new groups and accentuating old rivalries. These processes may, in turn, draw other
political institutions into the fray, as well as amplify both public and media attention. Thus, under
certain circumstances he Supreme Court may profoundly affect the agenda setting process in the
United States, and in doing so constitute an institutional source of change in American public policy
and politics.
The public hates Supreme Court decisions

Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor, 7/6/14
[Brad, 7/6/14, Christian Science Monitor, Confidence in the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme
Court all plummets , http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2014/0706/Confidence-in-thepresidency-Congress-and-the-Supreme-Court-all-plummets-video, accessed 7/13/14, AC]
At least according to Gallup, which reported recently that Americans' confidence in all three branches
of the US government has fallen, reaching record lows for the Supreme Court (30 percent) and
Congress (7 percent), and a six-year low for the presidency (29 percent). The presidency had the largest
drop of the three branches this year, down seven percentage points from its previous rating of 36 percent.
Since June 2013, confidence has fallen seven points for the presidency, four points for the Supreme
Court, and three points for Congress, Gallup reported, based on a poll taken in early June. Confidence
in each of the three branches of government had already fallen from 2012 to 2013.
Why this lack of confidence in government?
Congressional gridlock with no sign of compromise as leaders and would-be leaders talk past one
another, seeming to place debating points above legislative accomplishment.
A Supreme Court that seems perpetually divided along a conservative/liberal axis, as it was this
past week on cases related to birth control.

AT No Perception of the Court

Contradicted by 1ACif aff is so important than people will noticealso if they
win this argument it means they dont get any perception internal links
Turncourt action brings issues greater visibilityspecific to environment
Carlarne, Ohio State Law Professor, 8
[Cinnamon P., 7/1/2008, Notes From a Climate Change Pressure-Cooker: Sub-Federal Attempts
at Transformation Meet National Resistance in the USA, 40 Connecticut Law Review 1351,
http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1828&context=law_facpub, AC]
In the United States, state and local climate change policies are creating momentum for political
change. These political efforts, however, are dispersed and varied, making it difficult to bring about
rapid federal responses. One traditional avenue for directly engaging the United States federal
government in areas of environmental protection where attention lags is through the judiciary.
Judicial actions can be directly addressed or appealed to the federal courts. Judicial challenges provide a
mechanism for forcing an issue directly onto the political agenda that otherwise might remain off
the federal radar indefinitely.135
Increasingly, litigation is seen as an avenue for change in the context of climate change policy. 136
More than a dozen lawsuits related to global climate change "currently sit on the dockets of our federal
and state courts.' 37 In the sections that follow, this Article reviews several specific cases-among
many-where petitioners are using the judiciary in new and creative ways to require public and
private individuals to respond to climate change.

AT Courts Shield from Backlash

Politicans backlash against unpopular decisionsempirics prove
Whittington, Princeton Politics Professor, 5
[Keith E., November 2005, "Interpose Your Friendly Hand": Political Supports for the Exercise
of Judicial Review by the United States Supreme Court, The American Political Science
Reveiw, 99:4, p. 583-596, https://stgapgov.pbworks.com/f/Interpose.pdf, AC]
At other times, the justices might well act on their own constitutional understandings even when
those understandings are not shared by political leaders or when their expression is not desired. The
political logic for such instances of unfriendly and unwelcome judicial review will have to be rather
different from those described here. If the obstruction is relatively minor, as when the Court struck
down Theodore Roosevelt's Employers' Liability Act as being drafted too broadly while indicating that
the law's aims were constitution- ally legitimate, then the Court's accumulated political capital might
encourage leaders to simply yield to or work around the Court's rules (Employers' Liability Cases 1907;
Pickerill 2004). If the obstruction is more serious, as when the Hughes Court blocked major components of the New Deal or when the early Warren Court extended the constitutional protections of
suspected Communists, then the political reaction might be more severe and the strength of the
Court's diffuse support might be tested. Not all episodes of judicial review take the collaborative form
described here. The possibility of friendly judicial review, however, gives political leaders reason not only
to tolerate the Court when it behaves in politically difficult ways but also to actively support the Court
and help build a reservoir of public goodwill when it behaves in politically useful ways (Whittington
Forthcoming).

Link Boosters

Controversial Policies Spend Political Capital

Controversial policies drain political capital
Burke, University of Vermont political science professor, 9
(John P., Presidential Studies Quarterly 39.3 (Sept 2009), The Contemporary Presidency: The Obama
Presidential Transition: An Early Assessment, p574 (31). Academic One; accessed 7-15-10)
President Obama signaled his intention to make a clean break from the unpopular Bush presidency
with his executive orders and early policy and budget proposals. At the same time, he also sought to tamp
down public expectations for quick results on the economy. Early--and ambitious--actions were taken, but
as he cautioned in his inaugural address, "the challenges we face are real" and they "will not be met easily
or in a short span of time." His initial political capital seemed high.
But was the right course of action chosen? The decision was made to embrace a broad range of
policy reforms, not just to focus on the economy. Moreover, it was a controversial agenda. His early
efforts to gain bipartisan support in Congress--much like those of his predecessors--seem largely for
naught and forced the administration to rely on narrow partisan majorities. The question that
remains is whether his political capital, both in Congress and with the public, will bring him
legislative--and ultimately policy--success. Good transition planning is propitious, but it offers no
guarantees. Still, without it, political and policy disaster likely awaits. So far, President Obama seems to
reside largely on the positive side of the equation. But what the future might portend remains
another matter.
Unpopular action ensures backlash against the president politicians are

emboldened when they smell blood in the water
Stolberg, New York Times, 3
(Sheryl Gay, 9-13-3, New York Times, Democrats Find Some Traction on Capitol Hill, p. A1, Lexis)
"A presidential speech, instead of boosting support, is followed by a seven-point drop and suddenly
the atmosphere changes," said Thomas Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who follows
Congress. "Republicans, who have been reluctant to get off the reservation, now say, 'Wait just one
minute.' And Democrats have all the more reason to be unified." Ross K. Baker, a political scientist
at Rutgers University, agreed. "Any sign of weakness out of the White House is going to be
perceived by the president's allies in Congress as an opportunity to act a little bit more like free
spirits, and on the part of the opposition to be more aggressive," Professor Baker said. "It's the
blood-in-the-water syndrome."

AT Plan Popular
Only a risk of a link Theres always opposition to be overcome
Rosati, University of South Carolina Government and International Studies
professor, 4
(Jerel A., THE POLITICS OF UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY, 2004, p. 388)
The fragmentation of public ideological and foreign policy beliefs gives a president great opportunities
but also creates great risks. Unlike those in the 1950s, presidents now are no longer driven to pursue only
an anticommunist containment policy. Yet it is unclear how far a president may go in pursuing any policy
before losing public support. Presidents no longer come to office with automatic majorities behind their
policies. No matter what the president and his advisers believe, a substantial number of Americans in
the mass public and especially the elite public disagree, or are open to disagreement, with presidential
policy. Hence, the continual presidential search for, and frustration in obtaining, consensus and policy
legitimation.

AT Plan Popular with Public

Public popularity is irrelevant Tea Party opposition overwhelms
Tomasky, Democracy editor in chief, 11
(Michael Tomasky is a liberal American columnist, journalist and author. He is the editor in chief of
Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek / The Daily Beast, a contributing editor for The
American Prospect, and a contributor to The New York Review of Books, 9/19/11, America Needs Its
Edge Back; Obama is right. We need new roads and schools. But the Tea Partiers will fight him all the
way. Lexis, THW)
The most pertinent bill in Congress is the one Obama name-checked in his speech: an infrastructure-bank
proposal sponsored by Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Republican Sen. Kay Bailey
Hutchison of Texas. It's designed specifically to try to win bipartisan backing: the bank's initial funding
would be only $10 billion; it would have to become self-sufficient within a few years; it would be
overseen by an independent board; there's even a provision for making sure rural projects don't get
shafted. The public-private nature of the proposal is key, says Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of
Connecticut, lead sponsor of a companion House bill. "If we can really bring clarity to that," she says,
"we have a shot."
Hutchison, who got interested in infrastructure when George H.W. Bush appointed her to a commission,
says she thinks the bill could appeal to Republicans, but she hasn't spent much time talking it up to
her colleagues. "It's a kind of complicated and in-the-weeds type of legislation, so I have not tried to
get a big sponsorship," she says. Kerry holds on to optimism. "The idea is so powerful and such common
sense that my hope is that the better angels will prevail for the good of the country," he says. A member of
the recently formed "supercommittee" tasked with meeting the spending numbers agreed to in the debtceiling deal, Kerry says that the panel has a broad-enough mandate that his bill could be included in any
deficit-cutting agreement.
But that's an awfully tall order. Janet Kavinoky of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says the chamber
endorsed the Kerry-Hutchison plan and has backed the infrastructure-bank idea since 1982. Trying to get
Republicans on board, she says, has been daunting. "We've got several who say, 'We believe you, and
we'd like to do this,' but getting people to say publicly that they want to make infrastructure an exception
is a real challenge."
This is all the more maddening because support for such investments among the general public is
broad and deep and crosses ideological boundaries, notes Nicholas Turner, who heads transportation
initiatives for the Rockefeller Foundation. "The bipartisan support was stunning," Turner says. In a poll
the foundation commissioned in February, even 59 percent of Tea Party supporters considered
infrastructure investment to be vital. But as long as Barack Obama is for it, the Tea Partiers in
Washington will fight it.

Public support doesnt matter politicians are greedy

Knott, University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning and
Development professor, 12
(Jack H., March, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The President, Congress, and the
Financial Crisis: Ideology and Moral Hazard in Economic Governance, p. 82, YGS)
How was it possible that senior economic officials in the presidents administration
and prior administrations did not see this crisis developing or pursue policies to avert
it? The basic argument of the article is that the system for governing the marketthe
institutions, rules, regulations, and personnel practices that shape the way the market
operatesis central to understanding the development of and failure to anticipate the
financial crisis. In developing this argument, the article focuses on the role of the president
in interactions with the Congress, economic advisors, and the independent regulatory
agencies. Over the course of three decades leading up to the financial crisis, the give and take
of macroeconomic ideas representing different economic interests and professional views
converged into a common set of policy preferences and ideology across political parties, the
houses of Congress, the president, and professional experts. Reinforcing this development
was a powerful political moral hazard a condition in which public officials and private
interests had strong incentives to take actions mutually beneficial to them but adverse
to the overall economy and the interests of the general publicthat led to a decline
in institutional checks and balances in economic regulation. The system of economic
governance thus failed to function as envisioned, and thereby, contributed to the crisis.

AT No Blame
Zero sum nature of politics ensures president is assigned political blame
Fitts, Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, 96
(Michael, The Paradox of Power in the Modern State, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, January,
144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 827, Lexis, accessed 7-8-09, AB)
To the extent that the modern president is subject to heightened visibility about what he says and
does and is led to make increasingly specific statements about who should win and who should lose
on an issue, his ability to mediate conflict and control the agenda can be undermined. The modern
president is supposed to have a position on such matters as affirmative action, the war in Bosnia, the
baseball strike, and the newest EPA regulations, the list is infinite. Perhaps in response to these pressures,
each modern president has made more speeches and taken more positions than his predecessors, with Bill
Clinton giving three times as many speeches as Reagan during the same period. In such circumstances,
the president is far less able to exercise agenda control, refuse to take symbolic stands, or take
inconsistent positions. The well-documented tendency of the press to emphasize the strategic
implications of politics exacerbates this process by turning issues into zero-sum games.
Presidency is the focal point of politics president gets the credit or the blame
professor, 4
Given the popular image of presidential power, presidents receive credit when things are perceived
as going well and are blamed when things go badly. Unfortunately, American politics and the policy
process are incredibly complex and beyond considerable presidential control. With so many complex
issues and problems to address the debt problem, the economy, energy, welfare, education, the
environment, foreign policy this is a very demanding time to be president. As long as presidential
promises and public expectations remain high, the presidents job becomes virtually an impossible
task. Should success occur, given the lack of presidential power, it is probably not by the presidents own
design. Nonetheless, the president the person perceived to be the leader of the country will be
rewarded in terms of public prestige, greater power, and reelection (for him or his successor). However, if
the president is perceived as unsuccessful a failure this results not only in a weakened president
but one the public wants replaced, creating the opportunity to challenge an incumbent president or
his heir as presidential nominee.

AT Plan Not Perceived

Salience ensures a link policies that are salient with the public receive
congressional scrutiny
professor, 04
(Jerel A., THE POLITICS OF UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY, 2004, p. 309-11)
The third pattern to consider is that Congress is the ultimate political body within the U.S.
government. Members of Congress are political animals who are preoccupied with their
institutional status and power, their electoral security, and how they are perceived within and
beyond the Washington beltway. They tend to be obsessed with reelection and are constantly
soliciting funds from private contributors for reelection campaigns. A preoccupation with reelection
also makes them overly sensitive to public perceptions, political support, political trends, and their
public images. If the public and their constituents are interested in an issue and have staked out a
position, members of Congress tend to reflect the dominant public mood. If the public is uninterested,
members of Congress have more freedom of action; yet they are constantly pressured by the president,
executive agencies, congressional colleagues, special interest groups, and their constituents.

AT Aff Tricks

AT Name the Plan Avoids the Link

Congressional name spinning leads to partisan battles
Simon, Los Angeles Times congressional reporter, 11
[Richard, 6-19-11, LA Times, Congress turns bill titles into acts of exaggeration,
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/19/nation/la-na-0620-titles-20110620, accessed 7-13-14, AKS]
This new generation of attack titles is ratcheting up the gamesmanship among lawmakers in both
parties who are vying to make their bills stand out from the thousands introduced every year. Some
recent examples:
The Reducing Barack Obama's Unsustainable Deficit Act (it died in the last session); the Big Oil Welfare
Repeal Act (it has languished in committee); and the Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium
Act (it passed the Republican-run House, but even if approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate is
unlikely to get you-know-who's signature).
Lawmakers have long used catchy names and acronyms for bills. Controversy over Bruce
Springsteen concert ticket sales two years ago prompted the BOSS Act for Better Oversight of
Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing. But now, the titles increasingly hammer
home a political point of view.
"The fact is that everything on Capitol Hill has become incredibly polarized along partisan lines,
and members of each side of the aisle try to take advantage of anything they can get their hands on
to outflank their opponents," said Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University. "So
it's logical that eventually even the name of bills would be another mechanism to stick it to the other
party."
The titles can be real mouthfuls, like the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny, or REINS,
Act, a Republican-sponsored bill to limit the executive branch's regulatory authority. Then there's the
Democratic-written Repealing Ineffective and Incomplete Abstinence-Only Program Funding Act.
Neither has made it to a vote.
The trend toward partisan names would seem counterproductive because bills typically stand a
better chance of passing if they attract bipartisan support.
Senators rename the bills as necessary and actually read them

Simon, Los Angeles Times congressional reporter, 11
[Richard, 6-19-11, LA Times, Congress turns bill titles into acts of exaggeration,
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/19/nation/la-na-0620-titles-20110620, accessed 7-13-14, AKS]

Bills must carry a number and have an official title. "It's the prerogative of the sponsor to name the
legislation," though bills must conform to the "general rules of decorum," a House Rules Committee
spokeswoman said. She could not recall a name ever being rejected, but no such records are kept.
It's unlikely that more ordinary names make a difference when it comes down to voting. The
Democrats' name for their healthcare overhaul, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,
didn't help it gain any more Republican support.
But some names are designed to make it hard to oppose the bill.
After all, who could vote against the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act? It passed the House this
year.
Still, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), who voted against it, said if he were asked its name, he
would simply say: "That's the Republican Sham Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act. I retitle the
bills as necessary."
Reflecting on the recent spate of embellished titles, Ray Smock, the former House historian, said the 9th
Congress, which passed the Slave Trade Prohibition Act in 1807, might have missed a historic
opportunity.
"Had partisan abolitionists, using today's low standards of bill-naming, put a title to the bill," he said, "it
might have been called An Act to Prohibit the Dastardly and Evil Jobs-Killing Slave Trade Act."
Bill naming causes misinterpretationleads to decreased effectiveness

Jones, University of Stirling Legal Research Fellow, 13
[Brian Christopher, 12/14/13, SCOTUS Short Title Turmoil: Time for a Congressional Bill Naming
Authority, Yale Law and Public Policy Review, http://ylpr.yale.edu/inter_alia/scotus-short-title-turmoiltime-congressional-bill-naming-authority, accessed 7/13/14, AC]
The practice of congressional bill naming has reached eccentric, 1 oftentimes whimsical,
proportions.2 Recent observers have noted that short titles have gone overboard 3 and some are
laugh out loud funny,4 while others have grown so frustrated as to propose a constitutional
amendment banning bill title acronyms (even if tongue in cheek).5 Even the policy-wonkish Washington
D.C. periodical The Hill noted6 that among the most important issues facing immigration reform was
going to be how the proposal was named, a statement unlikely to have been uttered when many current
lawmakers began their careers. Yet the naming of legislation has implications not only for the
legislative process7 but also for the courts: If laws are ambiguous, short titles (along with purposes,
findings, and headings), may be used as a guide to meaning when interpreting statutes. 8 This
principle was fine when statutory titles were descriptive, technical accounts of a statutes contents.
Such is no longer the case.9 Contemporary titles are often capriciously worded, employing a range
of colorful language that may or may not relate to a laws substance. 10 Thus, in order to ensure
accuracy for all those who encounter bill names (e.g. legislators, judges, the general public, etc.), the
time has come to introduce one or more congressional bill naming authorities

Over the past few decades lawmakers have taken what used to be a descriptive and informative
statutory tool and transformed it into an overtly political and manipulative device, which
unfortunately [has] too much influence.11 In addition to taking the focus off the substantive
nature of legislation and placing increased emphasis on the presentational aspects of bills and
laws,12contemporary short titles could also be affecting whether or not bills become laws.13 Short titles
are used as framing and marketing devices,14 and indeed, these few words are now viewed by lawmakers
and others as an important aspect of the legislative process.15 These are just some of the fragmentary
implications of modern short titles. If more far-reaching effects are taken into consideration,
tendentious and promotional names may be hasten[ing] a decline in respect for democratic
governance.16

Internal Links

Political Capital

Political Capital Definition

Political capital is the combined resources available to the president to influence
lawmakers
Beckmann, UC-Irvine political science professor, & Kumar, Indian Institute of
Technology economics professor, 11
[Matthew N., & Vimal, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 41: 488-503, September 2011, Opportunism in
Polarization: Presidential Success in Senate Key Votes, 1953-2008, p. 489, footnote 2, Wiley, accessed:
7/8/13, ML]
(2.) To elaborate, we conceptualize "political capital" as selective-incentives presidents control and

may allocate to induce changes in lawmakers' votes. So, even as tactical applications may vary for
example, arm-twisting, brow-beating, horse-trading, etc.--all reflect the same underlying purpose:
allocating the presidency's unique reservoir of persuasive resources bargaining with particular
lawmakers.
Political capital involves being cooperative and rewarding

[Matthew N. Beckmann PhD and Associate Professor, Political Science School of Social Sciences at UC
Irvine; and Vimal Kumar, Journal of Theoretical Politics How presidents push, when presidents win: A
model of positive presidential power in US lawmaking,, 23: 3, Ebsco]
In the following we employ the omnibus concept of presidential political capital to capture this
conception of presidents positive power as persuasive bargaining. 1 Specifi- cally, we define presidents
political capital as the class of tactics White House officials employ to induce changes in
lawmakers behavior. 2 Importantly, this conception of presidents positive power as persuasive
bargaining not only meshes with previous scholarship on lobbying (see, e.g., Austen-Smith and
Wright (1994), Groseclose and Snyder (1996), Krehbiel (1998: ch. 7), and Snyder (1991)), but also
presidential practice. 3 For example, Goodwin recounts how President Lyndon Johnson routinely
allocated rewards to cooperative members : The rewards themselves (and the withholding of
rewards) ... might be something as unobtrusive as receiving an invitation to join the President in a
walk around the White House grounds, knowing that pictures of the event would be sent to hometown
newspapers ... [or something as pointed as] public works projects, military bases, educational research
grants, poverty projects, appointments of local men to national commissions, the granting of pardons, and
more. (Goodwin, 1991: 237)

Political Capital Key to Agenda

Policymaking requires horse trading President must use political capital to secure
agenda
Ryan, Political scientist & University of the West Indies University Director of the
Institute of Social and Economic Studies, 9
(Selwyn, 1-18-9, Trinidad Express, "Obama and political capital," Trinidad Express,
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=161426968, accessed 7-15-10)
One of the "realities" that Obama has to face is that American politics is not a winner-take-all
system. It is pluralistic vertically and horizontally, and getting anything done politically, even when
the President and the Congress are controlled by the same party, requires groups to negotiate,
bargain and engage in serious horse trading. No one takes orders from the President who can only
use moral or political suasion and promises of future support for policies or projects. The system
was in fact deliberately engineered to prevent overbearing majorities from conspiring to tyrannise
minorities. The system is not only institutionally diverse and plural, but socially and geographically so.
As James Madison put it in Federalist No 10, one of the foundation documents of republicanism in
America, basic institutions check other basic institutions, classes and interests check other classes
and interests, and regions do the same. All are grounded in their own power bases which they use to
fend off challengers. The coalitions change from issue to issue, and there is no such thing as party
discipline which translated, means you do what I the leader say you do.
Political capital determines success of the Presidents agenda

Light, Brookings Center for Public Service founding director, 99
(Paul Charles, New York University Professor of Public Service, The Presidents Agenda: Domestic
Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton, p. 25-26, Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?
id=vuWJHWdgstsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+Presidents+Agenda&hl=en&ei=X2FATOLRFIWKlw
flvLHxDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=the
%20Presidents%20Agenda&f=false, accessed 7-15-10)
In chapter 2, I will consider just how capital affects the basic parameters of the domestic agenda. Though
the internal resources are important contributors to timing and size, capital remains the cirtical factor.
That conclusion will become essential in understanding the domestic agenda. Whatever the Presidents
personal expertise, character, or skills, capital is the most important resource. In the past,
presidential scholars have focused on individual factors in discussing White House decisions, personality
being the dominant factor. Yet, given low levels in presidential capital, even the most positive and
most active executive could make little impact. A president can be skilled, charming, charismatic, a
veritable legislative wizard, but if he does not have the basic congressional strength, his domestic
agenda will be severely restricted capital affects both the number and the content of the

Presidents priorities. Thus, it is capital that determines whether the President will have the opportunity
to offer a detailed domestic program, whether he will be restricted to a series of limited initiatives and
vetoes. Capital sets the basic parameters of the agenda, determining the size of the agenda and
guiding the criteria for choice. Regardless of the Presidents personality, capital is the central force
behind the domestic agenda.
Political support key to agenda collapse of support crushes agenda

Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute fellow and political analyst, 3
(Norman J., Roll Call, 9-10-3, As Issues Pile Up; Bush Needs New Approach With Hill, Lexis)
When a president operates with sky-high approval and a reputation as a winner no matter what the odds,
he has immense leverage with Members of Congress who fear his wrath and assume he will prevail.
When he stumbles, the assumptions change, and the ability to exercise power attenuates.
Policymaking requires compromise

Barrett & Eshbaugh-Soha, University of North Texas, 7
[Andrew W. & Matthew, March, Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 1, Presidential Success on the
Substance of Legislation, pp. 100-112, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4623810, Accessed: 715-10)
Congress as an institution depends upon the willingness of its members to compromise to produce
legislation (Elving 1995). The lawmaking process is protracted and complicated with dozens of
opportunities for unsatisfied legislators to kill legislation, including simple inaction by committee chairs
or party leaders. With more than five hundred individuals divided into two legislative bodies, little can
be accomplished without building majority coalitions through bargaining and compromise.
Presidents, however, are only one among several cues that legislators use to decide how to vote (Kingdon
1981), with much coalition building taking place independent of presidential involvement (Arnold 1990).
Moreover, presidents must overcome several obstacles unique to their office when attempting to build
congressional coalitions (Edwards 2000). These include, but are not limited to, the president's limited
tenure in office as well as a different electoral clock and constituency than members of Congress. Each of
these provides different incentives for presidents and legislators to bargain, compromise, and
ultimately agree on legislative language. The hierarchical nature of the executive, in contrast to the
more decentralized legislature, also exacerbates presidential responsibility and accountability while
obscuring that of Congress. Given the difficulty of the lawmaking process itself and the unique
obstacles facing the president in building congressional coalitions, presidents will likely be forced to
make concessions on most bills they support, as they bargain with legislators to secure their passage.
Therefore, we hypothesize that presidents will need to compromise on the substance of legislation
before they sign most bills into law.

The President has a limited capability to pass his agenda. Passing items like the plan
take away from his ability to pass other legislation
Feehery, former House Speaker Hastert staffer and Feehery Group president, 9
(John, Feehery Group is a Washington-based advocacy firm, 7-21-9, CNN, Commentary: Obama enters
'The Matrix' www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/21/feehery.obama.matrix/index.html, accessed 7-16-10)
And, indeed, the Congress has its own rules that make quick legislative action, no matter
how popular with the American people, hard to achieve. The Obama agenda is
breathtaking in its scope and eye-popping in its cost. He seeks to completely recast the health
care, energy, financial services and automobile sectors of this country, as he seeks to make the
tax code more progressive, retirement programs more sustainable, and the immigration system
more welcoming to immigrants. And he also wants to stimulate the economy and get us out of
what some people are calling the "Great Recession." But can it all get done, and in a form that
makes his political base happy? The president insists that he can get this all done, and his
chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has implied that the financial crisis has actually given the White
House more momentum to get it all done. But history tells a different story. Congress has its
own code, and cracking that code usually means taking into account five different factors. These
five factors are: Money: It may seem trite, but the biggest factor in determining the size and
scope of a legislative agenda is how much money -- and more importantly, the perception of how
much money -- is available for the government to use. Bill Clinton's legislative agenda was
necessarily limited because his budget constraints made it difficult to spend money on big things.
George Bush, who inherited a fairly large budget surplus, had money to burn, which allowed him
to pass a prescription drug benefit. President Obama has no money, which means that if he wants
to pass a big new entitlement like a health care public option, he will have to make the Congress
take the painful step of raising a lot of taxes. Time: The legislative calendar is simply not that
long. A new administration has a little less than a year to pass its big-ticket items, mostly
because it is very hard to get major initiatives done in an election year. Take away the three
months it takes to hire key staff, a couple of months for the various congressional recesses, and
you have about six months to really legislate. Since Congress is supposed to use some time to
pass its annual spending bills (there are 12 that need to be passed each year, not counting
supplemental spending bills), time for big initiatives is actually very limited. Each day the
president takes time to travel overseas or to throw out the first pitch at an All Star game, he is
taking time away from making contacts with legislators whose support is crucial for the
president's agenda. Time is not a limitless resource on Capitol Hill. Political capital: A
president enters office with the highest popularity ratings he will ever get (barring a war or
some other calamity that brings the country together), which is why most presidents try to pass
as much as possible as early as possible in their administrations. The most famous example
of that was Franklin Roosevelt's Hundred Days. But there are other examples. Ronald
Reagan moved his agenda very early in his administration, George Bush passed his tax

proposals and the No Child Left Behind law very early in his White House. They understood
the principle that it is important to strike while the iron is hot. President Bush famously
misunderstood this principle when he said that he was going to use the "political capital" gained
in his re-election to pass Social Security reform. What he failed to understand was that as soon as
he won re-election, he was a lame duck in the eyes of the Congress, and he had no political
capital. President Obama believes he has a lot of political capital, and perhaps he does. But
each day he is in office, his political capital reserve is declining. And each time he goes to the
well to pass things like "cap and trade" makes it more difficult for him to pass his more
important priorities like health care. Focus: Congress can walk and chew gum at the same
time. But focus is essential to achieving results. Presidential focus quite often moves off the
domestic agenda and into the wider world of diplomacy. But that can spell greater political
danger for a president and his party. George H.W. Bush spent most of his presidency
winning a war against Iraq and successfully concluded the Cold War conflict with the
Soviet Union. But neither of those foreign policy successes helped him win re-election. His
son, George W. Bush, understood that he had to keep a tight focus on the economy and one big
domestic policy item (education), and while the war on terror did end up dominating his
presidency, Bush never forgot to focus on his domestic achievements. The biggest danger to
President Obama is not just foreign entanglements, it is also competing domestic priorities that
threaten to undermine his ability to get big things done. For example, the House vote on cap and
trade has made it very hard for conservative and moderate Democrats to join with Speaker
Nancy Pelosi on a more important health care bill.
Presidential negotiating key to agenda

Jacobs, Humphrey School Center for the Study of Politics and Governance director
& University of Minnesota political science professor, 13
[Lawrence R. Jacobs, The Public Presidency and Disciplinary Presumptions, Presidential Studies
Quarterly, Vol. 43 Issue 1, P. 28-29, ProQuest, AMS]
The Politics of Economics

Political organizations that represent established economic interests capitalize on contentious public
beliefs and the dispersal of government power. They wield resources and ongoing relationships of
advantage sharing and threats of political retribution to guide and, if necessary, pressure members
of Congress and administration officials to redirect, delay, or reject policies that threaten their
interests.
Ronald Reagan's wide-ranging efforts to shrink federal government responsibilities and funding was
subsequently checked or reduced as organized interests effectively used judicial oversight and
congressional alliances (Bickers and Stein 1995). Seeking change from the opposite ideological direction,
Obama faced formidable opposition to programs that would primarily benefit a large, diffuse, and
comparatively unorganized target population - namely, recipients of health care expansion.

Anticipating deadlock and potential defeat, he and his allies adapted to this imbalanced
organizational combat zone by striking compromises with stakeholders in the financial and health
care industries (Jacobs and King 2009, 2010).
Although strong public support can augment the White House's bargaining position, strategic
presidents enhance their probability of success by adjusting their positions, giving some ground to
legislators and well-organized interests with the sway to obstruct them (Burnam 2010; Dickinson
2008). In 2009-10, President Obama and his allies adjusted their policy positions on health care
reform, balancing their commitment to comprehensive reform against the strategic need to secure
support or acquiescence of powerful economic interests and their allies (Jacobs and Skocpol 2012).

Congress Approval Key to Political Capital

Congressional approval of policy is key to political capital
Kriner, Boston University associate professor of political science, 14
[Douglas L., June 2014, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Obamas Authorization Paradox: Syria and
Congresss Continued Relevance in Military Affairs, Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1540786450?accountid=147091, accessed 7/7/2014 CK]
Thus, presidents may seek authorization in the hope of securing immediate benefits in terms of
increased public support. Such support may be particularly likely to emerge if the authorization
succeeds. However, the most important advantages of a congressional authorization-even of a failed
authorization vote-may materialize months afterward as a military venture unfolds. A wealth of
scholarship has emphasized Congresss failure in all but the rarest of cases to use the power of the
purse, the WPR, or any other measure at its disposal to legislatively compel a president to abandon
his preferred military policy course (Fisher 1995; Rudalevige 2005; Schlesinger 1973). However, this
does not mean that Congress has remained silent when confronted with military policies with which
it disagrees. Rather, on a wide range of military actions from major wars in Korea, Vietnam, and
Iraq, to smaller interventions in Lebanon, Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia, members of Congress have
introduced legislation to constrain the commander in chief, investigated presidential policies, and
denounced the administrations handling of foreign policy before the television cameras. Recent
research suggests that through such actions, even though they do not have the force of law,
Congress has exerted significant influence on the duration of major military actions in the postWorld War II era (Kriner 2010).
Congressional criticism in each of these venues is politically costly. It can precipitate both real and
anticipated shifts in public opinion (Baum and Groeling 2010; Berinsky 2009; Howell and Pevehouse
2007), and it can force presidents to expend political capital in foreign policy that will then be
unavailable for other initiatives (Neustadt 1990). Moreover, congressional criticism sends signals of
American disunity to our adversaries, which can also affect the military costs that must be paid to
achieve the administrations objectives (e.g., Auerswald 2000; Schultz 2001). As a result, presidents
facing legislative challenges or even just intense public criticism of their military policies on Capitol
Hill may conclude that staying the course militarily is no longer worth the heightened costs and will
therefore adjust their policy course accordingly.

Perception Key to Agenda

Perception of congressional backing is key to presidents agenda
Kriner, associate professor of political science at Boston University, 14
Despite Congresss historically low approval ratings, the vast majority of Americans still express a
desire for the legislature to authorize the use of force before it commences. For example, an NBC
News poll conducted on the eve of President Obamas surprise announcement asked Do you think
that President Obama should or should not be required to receive approval from Congress before
taking military action in Syria? Almost 80% of Americans said yes.6 Similarly in September 2002,
only one year removed from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, almost two-thirds of Americans agreed that
President George W. Bush should have to get the approval of Congress before taking military
action against Iraq.7
Thus, it is at least conceivable that even simply seeking congressional authorization might pay
political dividends for the president in terms of rallying a skeptical American public behind another
military intervention in the Middle East. However, it is important to remember that presidents do not
make such highly public overtures and appeals in a vacuum (e.g., Jacobs and Shapiro 2000). Rather, the
efficacy of any sort of presidential public appeal is likely to be contingent on the response of other
political actors (e.g., Berinsky 2009; Brody and Shapiro 1989; Zaller 1992). As such, the ultimate effect
of Obamas decision to seek congressional authorization on public opinion may well depend on how that
gambit was received on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Congress Support Solves Rollback

Congressional approval of presidential action solves rollback
Kriner, Boston University associate professor of political science, 14
If congressional criticism during the course of a military venture is costly, then presidents have
strong incentives to do everything possible to minimize such criticism. Seeking congressional
authorization for the use of force may be one particularly powerful way of doing so. Even failed
authorizations may pay political dividends if those members who vote for the authorization find it
more difficult to criticize the presidents conduct of a war as the conflict unfolds. Both the 2004
general election and 2008 Democratic primaries provide suggestive evidence of such a dynamic.
John Kerry famously voted for the $87 billion supplemental Iraq War appropriation before he voted
against it, and he was constantly dogged by allegations of flip-flopping on the war. Similarly, Hillary
Clinton and John Edwards had trouble gaining traction with the antiwar left in 2008, both hampered by
their 2002 Senate votes to authorize the use of force against Iraq.
But are these examples emblematic of a larger pattern? As an initial inquiry, I first model legislators vote
choices on two initiatives to curtail the use of force in Iraq. The first roll call was on an amendment to
H.R. 1815 offered by Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) in 2005 calling on the Bush administration to develop a plan
for withdrawing American forces from Iraq. The second, potentially more serious initiative launched
under the newly minted and democratically controlled 11oth Congress was H.R. 2237, a bill sponsored by
Jim McGovern (D-MA) that would compel the president to withdraw American troops from Iraq
expeditiously. The key independent variable in the logistic regressions is whether or not each member had
previously voted to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002.16 To examine whether any effect for a previous
vote to authorize the Iraq War is limited only to Democratic members, we also include an
interaction between the previous authorization vote measure and a dummy variable indicating
whether or not each member is a Republican. The models also include a full range of control
variables drawn from Kriner and Shen (2014). Specifically, the models control for each members
partisanship, whether he or she was a party leader, each members number of foreign policy
committee memberships, gender, race, and the number of Iraq War casualties sustained within 30
miles of his or her constituency. Table 2 presents the results.
The data is strongly consistent with the hypothesis that a prior vote to authorize the use of force
diminishes a members willingness to vote against that war at a later date, even when the very
premise upon which the war was launched proved to be false. In both models, the coefficient for the
previous authorization variable is negative and statistically significant. In the 2005 roll call, the
coefficient for the previous authorization * Repub- lican interaction is small and statistically
insignificant. This shows that members of both parties who voted to authorize the war in 2002 were
significantly less likely to vote to curtail it in 2005 than were those who did not. In the 2007 vote on
the McGovern bill, all 130 Republicans who had voted to authorize the Iraq War in 2002 voted

against the bill; Ron Paul (R-TX) and John Duncan (R-TN), both of whom voted against the 2002
authorization, were the only two Republicans to vote for the McGovern bill. As a result, the
interaction is not included in the second model, but the data again suggests that prior authorization
votes depressed a members willingness to later break with the administration on a floor vote for
members of both parties.
Agencies tied to President, congress can blame agencies for failure

Feldman, Harvard University law professor, 6
[Noah, 1/8/2006, The New York Times, Our Presidential Era: Who Can Check the President?,
http://www.cfr.org/congresses-parliaments-national-legislatures/our-presidential-era-can-checkpresident/p9526, accessed 7/7/2014 CK]
In the 20th century, the Great Depression helped propel the presidency to its current level of
dominance. The administrative agencies that were created during Franklin Delano Roosevelts New
Deal were a response to the tremendous complexity and growth of the national economy. An
overwhelmingly Democratic Congress went along with the Roosevelt administration, giving the
agencies broad discretion in regulating the economy and addressing workers welfare. Over time, as
the agencies expanded to administer health and safety regulations, Congress realized that it was
more convenient to pass the buck to agencies than to deal with hard policy questions on its own. A
congressman could take credit for an agencys action when it was convenient and blame the
agencies when they adopted policies that his constituents disliked. It is now taken for granted that
the president is in charge of the vast administrative apparatus that makes most of the important
domestic-policy decisions in the country.

AT Political Capital Theory Flawed

Political capital is finite and the theory is true
Polarization: Presidential Success in Senate Key Votes, 1953-2008, p. 491-2, Wiley, accessed: 7/8/13,
ML]
Returning to our model and its implications, we see a prerequisite to presidential influence is the
president's willingness and ability to spend political capital lobbying lawmakers. When a president
either chooses not to get involved (A = 0) or lacks political capital to spend (B = 0), the pivotal senator
will propose and pass her preferred bill. In such circumstances, the chamber's preference distribution
does not matter; the president will have no influence.
In other circumstances--ones commonplace since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Oval Office--the
president not only seeks to exert influence on Capitol Hill, but also wields some political capital to
invest to that end. We now turn to these cases and in doing so uncover how presidents' influence turns
on more than his supply of political capital and the location of the pivotal voter; it also depends on the
level ideological polarization. Let us explain.
Political capital increases lobbying power and the odds for passage studies prove
Polarization: Presidential Success in Senate Key Votes, 1953-2008, p. 492, Wiley, accessed: 7/8/13, ML]
Below we illustrate this general finding for three archetype distributions--one unimodal, one uniform, and
one bimodal--as shown in Figure 2 and defined in Appendix A. Note that, although these three archetype
distributions vary substantially in terms of polarization, from low (unimodal) to moderate (uniform) to
high (bimodal), they all have the same median voter, which allows us to isolate the impact of ideological
polarization per se, independent of the pivotal voter's preference. Put differently, comparing presidents'
influence across these three distributions reveals how polarization (or lack thereof) affects
presidents' legislative influence (or lack thereof), all else equal.
Figure 3 displays the president's influence on the policy outcome given these different levels of
congressional polarization, assuming the president's goal is to achieve an outcome as far to the right
as possible (toward 1/2). Perhaps the most obvious result is that presidents endowed with political
capital and executing a vote-centered strategy can always improve their prospects for success by
lobbying. Across all three distributions, even modest supplies of political capital permit the

president to pull the outcome toward his preferred outcome. And, of course, added supplies of
political capital only serve to further enhance presidents' policy-making influence.
Political capital theory true leverage is used to curb public support in favor of the
President, and to assert policies
Ponder, Drury Universitys Political Science Professor, 12
(Daniel E., June 2012, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Presidential Leverage and the Politics of Policy
Formulation, 42, no. 2, p. 304-5, YGS)
Presidents can use leverage strategically so as to maximize their power potential.

The notion of the presidents public standing to attitudes toward government as a whole
derives in part from Stephen Skowroneks observation that Presidents stand preeminent
in American politics when government has been most thoroughly discredited, and when
political resistance to presidency is weakest, presidents tend to remake the government
wholesale (1993, 37). Indeed, at one level, presidential leverage can be conceived of as
having a familial resemblance to Skowroneks warrant for power, by which he means a
kind of license or authority to put political power into action (1993, esp. chaps. 2 and 3).
Skowronek argues that these warrants are contingent on the political time in which
presidents serve. Leverage is similar in that it systematically measures or quantifies this
contingency and identifies when a president truly does stand preeminent in American
politics. This state of affairs obtains when leverage is high. When government action (or
inaction) has left the public wanting, distrustful, and/or skeptical of political action,
presidents may enjoy leverage over competing institutions and thus feel emboldened to increase the
variety of their public policy proposals, perhaps realizing increased policy
success in the legislative arena. Presidential leverage conveys how presidents (via the
imperfect measure of presidential approval) fare in the presence of public attitudes in the
other institutions of government, with specific reference to trust in government. When
the public lacks trust in other institutions and the president is able to rise above those
institutions, he builds distance between himself and the beleaguered institutions of
government; on the downside, he may sense he has more of a warrant for action than is

actually the case (see Schlesinger 1973; Skowronek 1993).9
Similar too is Charles O. Joness consideration of leeway. Jones sees leeway as
essentially an exercise in capitalizing on the conspicuous features of separationism
. . . encouraged in post-World War II politics by the frequency of split party government
(2000, 6). Leeway is similar to Skowroneks warrants in that they both imply that
presidents can use structural and institutional contexts to forge their own paths, perhaps
working outside the boundaries of what might be acceptable or predictable.
Leverage focuses on the public dimension of presidential action, and presidents
with considerable leverage can further veer off course and take advantage of the
feeling, however temporary, that they are first among equals with the leverage to set
the course of American politics.10 Leverage, broadly conceived, derives from and builds
upon these insights into presidential authority. I conceive it not as antagonistic to
warrants or leeway, but rather as part of a cumulative process that helps explain
presidential action where presidents can assert, however intuitively, leverage over the
course of American politics and public policy.

AT PC Theory Flawed [Hirsh version]

They say political capital theory flawed group
1. Theory is true- president only has a certain amount of tangible and intangible
resources at his disposal. If one bill is unpopular, then the president has to use
both kinds of his resources to get the bill through Congress.
2. Hirsh says the critical flaw in political capital theory is that it is easily
overestimated not relevant in the context of fiat. The plan passes regardless
and doesnt affect Obamas decision to push or not push the agenda item.
Doesnt matter how much political capitalObama perceives he has, only
matters how much is necessary to pass the agenda item. Hirsh does conclude
that momentum and mandate power can help the President pass bills.
3. Hirsh assumes political capital must be quantifiable to be spent. Other
qualitative factors of political capital like mandate rhetoric have empirically
been successful in increasing presidential influence: Eisenhower and Reagan
prove.
4. Political capital is meaningful to legislation Hirsh accepts political capital
theoryhe uses it to qualify the support a president can expect
Hirsh, National Journal Chief Correspondent, 13
[Michael, Updated: May 30, 2013 | 12:26 a.m., February 7, 2013 | 8:10 p.m., Theres No Such Thing as
Political Capital, http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital20130207, accessed 7-10-13, AFB]
The point is not that political capital is a meaningless term. Often it is a synonym for mandate
or momentum in the aftermath of a decisive electionand just about every politician ever elected
has tried to claim more of a mandate than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can say that because he
was elected and Romney wasnt, he has a better claim on the countrys mood and direction. Many
pundits still defend political capital as a useful metaphor at least. Its an unquantifiable but
meaningful concept, says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. You cant really look
at a president and say hes got 37 ounces of political capital. But the fact is, its a concept that matters, if
you have popularity and some momentum on your side.

5. Obama gets the blame for all legislation he signs it and puts it into action
that means he only has a finite amount of capital that he can spend pushing
legislation people wont cooperate over controversial issues when the
president is unpopular
6. Hirsh assumes that legislators are cemented in their views if they look at
something in isolation- thats false. There is a large contingent that can be
persuaded if Obama influential enough on the Hill. This is proven by
Republican Senators who have crossed party lines, like Susan Collins from
Maine, or Mark Kirk from Illinois
7. He also cites LBJ, Bush, Obama, Lincoln, and FDR as examples but all of
them prove that political capital theory is true- all of them used time and
resources and their credibility to try to persuade members of Congress and
the public on controversial issues and had a limited amount of it to spend. All
of these presidents had successes and failures due to political capital or the
lack of political capital.
8. The atmosphere cant change that much in a few weeks like Hirsh says if
the president has to lobby and irritates key politicians, nothing would change
so drastically in a few weeks It would take years
9. Polarization means PC works ideology has never been the sole reason
Obama has been unable to pass legislation Obama can use PC on the pivotal
voters who care about the substance of the bill to get it passed empirically
true.
10. There is no alternative even their authors concede that passivity is worse
than persuasion because it is perceived as weak. That means persuasion is the
best way of pushing legislation.
11.

AT Political Capital Not Key

Best studies go neg capital is key
Beckmann and McGann, UC Irvine political science professors, 8
(Matthew N. and Anthony J., Reader in Government at the University of Essex, Journal of Theoretical
Politics 20(2):201, DOI: 10.1177/0951629807085818, Navigating the Legislative Divide: Polarization,
Presidents, and Policymaking in the United States, http://jtp.sagepub.com)
Here we propose a theory that casts some early rays of light onto the policy consequences of polarization
in Congress. Building from a simple theoretical model in which the president seeks to promote his
preferred policies in the Senate (see Snyder, 1991; Groseclose, 1996), we assess differences in the
chambers preference distribution from normal to unanimous to bimodal as well as the political
capital at the presidents disposal.2 Results show that absent the president, ideological polarization
makes amassing the votes needed to beat the status quo difficult, so gridlock frequently prevails. The
same is true when the president lacks political capital to spend. However, when endowed with
abundant capital, facing a polarized legislature enables presidents to pass policies closer to their
ideal than would have been possible in an assembly characterized by greater ideological
homogeneity. Hence the familiar prediction of blanket gridlock is overblown . Instead, comparative
statics show that the consequences of ideological polarization in Congress are conditional: they
depend on the nature of the preference distribution, the involvement of the president, and the
political capital at his disposal.
Political capital is real and effective specifically this Congress

Roarty, National Journal politics writer, 2-21-13
[Alex, 2-21-13, The Atlantic, There's Reason to Be Optimistic about CongressSeriously,
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/theres-reason-to-be-optimistic-about-congressseriously/273393/, accessed 7-9-13, MSG]
Nevertheless, this is a new congressional session, and Boren's pessimism might possibly be proved
wrong. For the first time in a decade, if not longer, conditions are aligned for bipartisan deal-making,
raising hopes that Congress might actually do something and satisfy the wishes of millions of
Americans hungry for action. "I am pleased with the signs I see in Congress today to try to make
deals," said Lee Hamilton, who was a veteran Democratic House member from Indiana. "There are
threads of it -- it's not a fabric yet -- but there are threads, and that's encouraging."
In today's context, defining success is important -- and requires a healthy dose of both skepticism and
pragmatism. There's little hope that this Congress can reverse the -- exacerbated by, among other things,
powerful special interests and partisan media -- that has gripped Washington. The forces that drove Rep.
Boren out of Congress remain potent, and the legislative atmosphere on Capitol Hill is still toxic.

Instead of a long-term course correction, the question is whether Republican leaders in the House,
President Obama, and Senate Democrats can facilitate a reprieve -- if only to show the public that
the institution is still functional. Cutting a deal with the broad backing of both parties isn't a
question so much of relieving those pressures as of learning to pass laws in spite of them.
Favorable Conditions
The makeup of the 113th Congress and the occupant of the White House make conditions riper for
bipartisan legislation than at any time since President George W. Bush's first years in office. Since
then, Washington has been in the grip of one of two dynamics: Either one party has held Congress and the
presidency, or one party, possessing limited power, has had little interest in passing consequential
legislation.
The latter was the case last session, when Republicans controlled only the House. In most cases, they
used this chamber to approve legislation, such as Rep. Paul Ryan's eponymous budget, that helped define
the party's agenda but had no chance of gaining approval in the Senate (much less withstanding a veto
from the White House). They were trying to wait out a president whom they believed would be sent
packing in 2013.
Democrats were in a similar position from 2007 to 2009, when they controlled Congress but wanted to
wait out Bush's tenure. The lack of bipartisanship, of course, didn't prevent major legislation from
becoming law over the past 10 years. But when Democrats controlled Washington and passed the
Affordable Care Act in 2010, or similarly empowered Republicans approved Medicare Part D in
2003, they didn't need the backing of the other party -- and by and large didn't get it.
This session is different. Neither party has unilateral control, and yet there is an appetite, in the first
year of Obama's second term, to make a serious attempt to legislate. The last time Capitol Hill saw
something similar came in 2001 and 2002. Republicans suddenly lost the Senate when Sen. Jim Jeffords
of Vermont defected from the GOP in the early summer, but Congress still overwhelmingly approved the
No Child Left Behind Act months later (although the first round of Bush's tax cuts passed with only a
dozen or so Democrats on board in each chamber). Later, the parties worked together to approve a slew of
national security issues after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But drawing comparisons to that period is difficult because of 9/11; and, besides, most of Bush's term
is hardly associated with bipartisan comity. The better parallel -- and the experience current optimists
point to -- is 1996 and 1997, which bridges the end of President Clinton's first term and the
beginning of his second. That two-year span saw agreements on a series of important issues, ranging
from two big-ticket items (welfare reform and a balanced-budget agreement) to lesser-known
achievements (such as raising the minimum wage).
The similarity between that period and now extends beyond the split control of government. Only a
year earlier, Republicans had ridden the "revolution" of 1994 into control of Congress, when they
promised to push their agenda whether Clinton approved or not. But the party ultimately dealt with
political setbacks, none more damaging than the government shutdown of 1996. The public blamed
Republicans, and afterward Clinton never again trailed GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole (who was
Senate majority leader at the time of the shutdown) in a head-to-head matchup, according to preelection
polls.
Boehner's Challenge

Public opinion might once again be pulling against Republicans, burnt as they were by Obama's
reelection and their unexpected losses in the Senate. In a January poll by The Wall Street Journal and
NBC News, 49 percent of adults disapproved of the GOP -- and only 26 percent approved. It was the
worst rating for Republicans since 2008. Just as the Republicans in Clinton's time decided their
political survival depended on coming to the table, the GOP of today might do the same.
"Republicans overplayed the government shutdown, and President Clinton won that battle," said Dan
Glickman, a former House member who was Clinton's Agriculture secretary. "And, with that, he
effectively used the bully pulpit to control the agenda. He gave a lot of cover for people to vote for him.
It's not the only factor, but members of Congress are much [more] likely to support a president when
the people at home are inclined to support the president."
How much Obama's broad popularity matters to most GOP House members is debatable. With many of
the president's supporters packed into heavily Democratic urban districts, most Republicans represent
safely red districts. (In November, Mitt Romney won 227 congressional districts, a majority, despite
losing by 4 percentage points in the national vote.)
But Obama's standing could weigh more heavily on House Speaker John Boehner and Majority
Leader Eric Cantor than on their followers; Cantor has recently attempted to rebrand the party
with a softer image. While their charges' interests are more parochial, they have the national party's
image to worry about. Popular opinion could prod the two leaders to reach agreements with
Obama, especially on emotional issues such as gun control and immigration. Or, at the very least,
public pressure could work to ease the disagreements that make even basic government action
difficult -- a factor that might have been at work when House Republicans engineered a threemonth delay of the debt ceiling. "They're hearing the message outside the Beltway that 'we elected you
people to make things work,'" said John Breaux, the former longtime Democratic senator from Louisiana.
The onus falls particularly hard on Boehner, whose struggles to control his conference are well
documented. More than any other player in Washington, he will determine whether anything gets done
this year. How he decides to proceed could rest on how frequently he's willing to leave conservative
colleagues out in the cold and, consequently, how far he's willing to risk his speakership.
The good of the party, and not his seat of power, propelled Boehner's decision to bring the
superstorm Sandy relief bill to a vote earlier this year, when it passed with just a minority of
support from Republicans. That combination -- Democrats and the moderate wing of the House
GOP -- is the pathway to enacting a sweeping set of bipartisan agreements.
A week after the storm vote, a large bipartisan majority passed a three-month extension of the debt
ceiling. "It is hard to see this Congress being viewed as a bipartisan one, but we have seen a glimmer of
light on the recent bipartisan vote to extend the debt ceiling," said Ron Bonjean, a onetime aide to
the Republican leadership.
Obama's Duty
Maintaining that momentum in the House won't be easy, and it could require Obama's personal
leadership. Getting Boehner to take such a perilous route could depend in large part on successful
cajoling from the president. And on this subject -- the relationships among Washington's top
leaders -- discussion of a deal being cut becomes sharply pessimistic.

Political capital is specifically true in close cases - publicizing the issues and
polarization makes it work
ML]
The final important piece in our theoretical model--presidents' political capital--also finds support in
these analyses, though the results here are less reliable. Presidents operating under the specter of
strong economy and high approval ratings get an important, albeit moderate, increase in their
chances for prevailing on "key" Senate roll-call votes (b = .10, se = .06, p < .10). Figure 4 displays the
substantive implications of these results in the context of polarization, showing that going from the lower
third of political capital to the upper third increases presidents' chances for success by 8 percentage points
(in a setting like 2008). Thus, political capital's impact does provide an important boost to presidents'
success on Capitol Hill, but it is certainly not potent enough to overcome basic congressional realities.
Political capital is just strong enough to put a presidential thumb on the congressional scales, which
often will not matter, but can in close cases.
Lastly, two of the control variables are particularly noteworthy. The first is the president's public
declaration of his preferred outcome (b = .64, se = .26, p < .05), which shows that presidents fare far
better on publicized positions--24 points better, holding all else at its 2008 values. While this
relationship may partly be causal, it is more likely reflects the fact that presidents tend to publicize
popular policies (see Canes-Wrone 2005) and also that public statements are symptomatic of a
broader lobbying campaign (see Beckmann 2010). The other significant control variable is the one
accounting for nonideological polarization changes occurring in Washington over the last 50 years (a
secular trend captured by the natural log of the number of Congresses since the 83rd). Results for this
variable show more recent senators have been more willing to defeat the president on key, contested
roll-call votes, all else equal (b = -0.42, se = 0.13, p < .05). To the extent senators' ideological
polarization has intertwined with the postwar Washington's more politicized environment, it has muted
presidents' ability to exploit centrist senators' increased isolation.
All told, the multiple regression results corroborate the basic model and its principal hypothesis:
ideological polarization around that pivotal voter's position provides presidents with a better
opportunity to win key roll-call votes. This is especially true if the president is backed by high public
approval and buoyed by a strong economy. By contrast, a president confronting a far-off pivotal voter
surrounded by like-minded colleagues has few options for achieving legislative success, regardless of his
political potency.

AT Political Capital Not Key Ideology and/or Little Effect

[Dickinson, Beckmann & Kumar]
Political capital key polarization allows political capital to be concentrated
increases chances of passage
ML]
That Congress has experienced increased polarization is clear, and burgeoning is the
literature investigating its causes and consequences. Here we examine a counterintuitive
wrinkle on the latter. Drawing from a simple game-theoretic model in which a president
strategically allocates scarce political capital to induce changes in legislators votes, we
show congressional polarization can actually improve a presidents prospects for
winning key roll-call votesa hypothesis that emerges inasmuch as polarization enables
presidents to concentrate their resources lobbying fewer members (compared to a more
homogenous chamber). We test this hypothesis by investigating presidents success on
Congressional Quarterlys key Senate roll-call votes, 1953-2008.
That the last half-century has seen increased polarization in Washington is clear.
Holders of most key posts and key votes just a few decades back, conservative
Democrats and liberal Republicans are now few and far between, so much so that one
scribe recently referred to the former as endangered species and the latter as essentially
extinct (Roll Call, October 27, 2005). Replacing these moderates have been resolute
ideologues and loyal partisans (Fleisher and Bond 2004; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006;
Poole and Rosenthal 1984; 1997; Sinclair 2006; Theriault 2008). Plainly, Jim Hightowers
aphorism that Theres nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead
armadillos remains instructive, and more so with each passing year.
In light of Congresss increasingly polarized character, a burgeoning literature has
sought to uncover the causes and consequences. While a myriad of factors have been
identified as contributing to congressional polarization (Brady and Han 2007; Carson et al.
2007; Fleisher and Bond 2004; Jacobson 2000; Ladewig 2010; McCarty, Poole, and
Rosenthal 2006; Poole and Rosenthal 1997; Sinclair 2006; Stonecash, Brewer, and Mariani
2003; Theriault 2008), the hypothesized effect is comparatively clear: legislative gridlock.
Partisan polarization (via divided government) is thought to engender gridlock by
promoting posturing over compromising (Gilmour 1995; Groseclose and McCarty 2001;
Lee 2009; Sinclair 2006), and ideological polarization is predicted to encourage gridlock

by reducing the range of status quos that can be beat by a coalition preferring something else
(Brady and Volden 1998; Krehbiel 1998).
But, of course, gridlock is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Although polarization
certainly inhibits lawmaking (Barrett et al. 1997; Binder 1999, 2003; Coleman 1999;
Howell et al. 2000; Jones 2001; Kelly 1993), significant laws continue to pass
underunified and divided government, and even in the face of substantial polarization (see
esp. Mayhew 2005). This article considers these exceptions to the general rule.
Specifically, building on Snyder (1991) (see also, Beckmann and McGann 2008; Groseclose
and Snyder 1996) we develop a simple game-theoretic model in which the president
allocates scarce political capital to induce changes in senators votes and, in turn, show
how a polarized chamber, compared to one with more homogenous preferences, can actually
improve a presidents prospects for winning important roll-call votes and passing
preferred legislation. We test this hypothesis against data on presidents success on key
Senate roll-call votes from 1953 to 2008.1

Political capital allows the president to appear more bipartisan, increasing

Congressional influence bypasses ideologies
Villalabos et al., University of Texas at El Paso Political Science Assistant Professor,
12
[Jos D., Justin S. Vaughn, Boise State University Assistant Professor of Political Science, Julia R. Arazi,
Marquette University Assistant Professor of Political Science, September 2012, Politics or Policy? How
Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress, Presidential Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3, Center
for the Study of the Presidency, p. 554-5, Proquest, accessed 7-8-13, UR]
The second category of presidential messages moves away from the electoral logic of mandate rhetoric
and toward the normative ethos of bipartisanship. In this category, rather than grounding an argument in a
perceived mandate, the president makes the case for his policy proposal by highlighting efforts for
having (or having had) the two major parties (and, thus, the two elected institutions) come together
over common bonds despite their political differencesto work on behalf of the public good. The
logic here is quite different, as presidential messages of bipartisanship frequently contain within
them not implicit threats but explicit pleas as well as references to evidence of bipartisan partnership.
Furthermore, with these appeals for unity comes an incentive for congressional support: shared
credit. The president who goes bipartisan is also the president who invites members from the other
side of the aisle to Rose Garden bill-signing ceremonies and compliments rather than rebukes partisan
opponents during subsequent State of the Union reflections.
A president who complements his policy proposal messages with bipartisan rhetoric is not, however,
necessarily a benevolent, nonstrategic actor. As Coleman and Manna (2007, 401) note, arguably
weakening partisan loyalties in the public and an electoral base somewhat independent of fellow
partisans in Congress provide presidents with incentives to portray themselves in their
communications as above the political fray and virtually above or outside the system of partisanship
and elections altogether. Indeed, in their study of presidential partisan rhetoric, Coleman and Manna find
that the relative degree of partisanship (or bipartisanship) in a presidential speech is driven by strategy,
with the strength of a presidential embrace or snub of partisanship determined by the presidents political
situation.6
This conclusion squares with case study work done by Neustadt (1960) and Bonds (2002), whose
analyses of Harry Trumans attempt to sell the Marshall Plan to Congress presents a bipartisan strategy
rooted not in normative considerations, but rather in political pragmatism, in this case due to the political
weaknesses of Trumans successor presidency.7 Indeed, as Neustadt (1960, 54) contends, The plain fact
is that Truman had to play bipartisanship as he did or lose the game. Similarly, in an article that argues
bipartisanship is every bit as political as partisanship, Trubowitz and Mellow (2005, 433) add that
bipartisan rhetoric is also motivated by a presidents strategic desire to court swing voters while
demonstrating political independence.8 Accordingly, we hypothesize the following:
H2: As presidential appeals bipartisanship increase, Presidential success in Congress will increase.

Polarization increases political capitals effectiveness 50 years of data prove

ML]
But beyond these basic results is the more intriguing insight: as polarization grows, increasing are the
president's policy returns on lobbying investments. By allowing the president to focus his political
resources on only a handful of swing voters, polarization permits presidents to exert greater influence
than would be possible in a chamber packed with so-called centrists. Consequently, given some level of
political capital, the president exerts the least influence in the nonpolarized (unimodal) legislature and
the greatest influence in the polarized (bimodal) one.4 Again, this illustration just affirms the general
result proved earlier: all else equal, ideological polarization around the pivotal voter improves
presidents' prospects for exerting influence, prevailing on key votes, and securing legislative success.
Ideology not definitively key political capital works and policy preference varies
for each person
model of positive presidential power in US lawmaking,, 23: 3, Ebsco, accessed: 7/8/13, ML]
Obviously, this basic model depicts a more or less non-partisan policymaking process. This is
because pivotal voters choose which way to vote based on their policy pref erences (rather than
their party affiliations) and because neither presidents nor opposing leaders can be restricted, by
rule, from proposing alternatives. We think this non-partisan approach is instructive for at least
two reasons. First, it is unclear whether, or at least to what extent, cartel theory applies in the Senate.
Second, even in the House, Cox and McCubbins (2005) have shown that the foremost limitation to the
majority partys negative agenda control comes when the president proposes and promotes his
initiatives. As such, we believe our non-partisan model of presidential coalition building affords
insights to both partisan (e.g. Cox and McCubbins (1993, 2005)) and non-partisan (e.g. Brady and
Volden (1998) and Krehbiel (1998)) models of US lawmaking. It helps spec-ify the mechanisms by
which presidents augment the majority partys negative agenda control during unified
government and occasionally roll it during divided government.

Polarization is what political capital more effective allows Obama to concentrate

his resources
Beckmann and McGann, UC Irvine political science professors, 8
(Matthew N. and Anthony J., Reader in Government at the University of Essex, Journal of Theoretical
Politics 20(2):201, DOI: 10.1177/0951629807085818, Navigating the Legislative Divide: Polarization,
Presidents, and Policymaking in the United States, http://jtp.sagepub.com)
We can generalize these ndings to the case where the president needs to target more than one vote, as
would be the case in this example if a super-majority was required. If the president needs n votes to pass
measure o1 and C(o, si is linear, then he will need to pay 2n times the cost of a median senator. In this
case it is not clear that it is cheaper for the president to get his measure passed in the polarized case; it
depends on the number of votes he has to buy. In the polarized case each vote is relatively expensive, so if
the president has to buy many votes, it may be more expensive than in a more homogenous case.
Polarizations advantage to the president, after all, was that it allowed him to concentrate his
resources on the few senators who will have a very signicant effect. Therefore, polarization
generally works to the presidents advantage provided the president is in a situation where
winning over a few voters can signi- cantly change the outcome (i.e. the polarization is distributed
around the pivotal voter). If many members are clustered at the pivot point, any additional
polarization will limit presidential inuence, produce policy stalemate, and reinforce legislative
gridlock. Discussion By all indications, the partisan and ideological polarization that has come to
characterize ofcials in Washington shows no signs of abating. If anything, it appears that the schism
between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, will only continue to grow. The simple
but important question that many have asked is, so what? How does polarization affect the policymaking
process and the outcomes that result? While Mayhews initial study proved important laws continue to
prevail even in the face of divided government and polarization, subsequent research has indicated that
partisan and ideological polarization does encourage legislative gridlock, which, in turn, privileges the
status quo. This happens partly by germinating partisanship and posturing over negotiation and
compromise, and partly by leaving ideologically distant pivotal voters unable to nd an alternative they
prefer even when they seek compromise and negotiate sincerely. By contrast, we theorize that
polarizations impact on US lawmaking is conditional. Instead of hypothesizing gridlock
monotonically increases with polarization, our model predicts polarizations policymaking impact
depends on three elements: the default preference of the pivotal voter, the extent of polarization
around the pivotal voter, and the presidents willingness (and ability) to spend his capital to win.
Depending on the particular constellation of these factors, predictions range from the familiar one
of gridlock on through to a president who not only avoids stalemate, but actually signs into law bills
that are closer to his preference than we would otherwise expect. Drawing from this model, then, a
more nuanced view of presidential inuence emerges. Assuming todays White House ofcials are
eager to promote the presidents legislative agenda, we can now see when those efforts are likely to
pay off namely, when the president enjoys ample political capital and confronts a polarized
legislature (i.e. one where there are few legislators sitting between the pivotal voter and some point
much closer to the president). Con- versely, when the president does not get involved or lacks
political capital when he does, all the conventional wisdom about pivotal voters and gridlock holds.
Also, any president promoting his agenda before a homogenous Senate (say, one characterized by a

normal distribution of preferences) is highly constrained by its predispositions. Therefore, as future
researchers revisit presidents potential inuence in Congress, accounting for its conditional nature should
provide more discriminating results and permit more judicious inferences.

AT Political Capital Not Key [Beckmann & Kumar]

The aff is misreading Beckmann and Kumar they both conclude neg heres the
intro to prior to their article
Bond, Texas A&M political science professor and Fleisher, Fordham political science
professor, 11 [Jon and Richard, 9-1-11, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Editors
Introduction, 3, Volume: 41, p. 437-8, HG]
Another recurring theme is the effect of party polarization on presidential congressional relations.
In "Opportunism in Polarization: Presidential Success in Senate Key Votes, 1953-2008," Matthew N.
Beckmann and Vimal Kumar incorporate party polarization into the analysis of political capital.
They challenge the conventional view that party polarization reduces the effectiveness of
presidential bargaining. Testing hypotheses from a parsimonious game-theoretic model, Beckman
and Kumar offer theoretical and empirical evidence that if parties in Congress are polarized, the
allocation of scarce "political capital" can actually improve a president's prospects for winning rollcall votes. The key to understanding this counterintuitive result is that polarization enables presidents to
concentrate scarce resources lobbying fewer members.
Beckmann concludes negative presidential influence is a key part of successful

legislation
Relyea, Congressional Research Service, 11
[Harold C., December 2011, Pushing the Agenda: Presidential Leadership in U.S. Lawmaking, 19532004, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Volume: 41, pg. 844-845, Proquest, accessed 7-9-13, MSG]
Matthew Beckmann of the University of California at Irvine provides an interesting empirical analysis
of presidential leadership in lawmaking for the period from the Eisenhower through the Bush II
administrations. He notes that the key to a president's legislative leadership is strategy, not resolve
(p. 2), and concludes that the greatest source of influence for postwar presidents comes "in the
legislative early game, not the legislative endgame" (p. 2). Presidents who are strategically adept
work to get specific issues on the congressional calendar and, then, maneuver to insure that certain
proposals rise up as alternatives. Beckmann suggests that the best route for constructing winning
coalitions consists of "mobilizing leading allies, determining opponents, and circumventing
endgame floor fights altogether," rather than the typical path of gathering support from "centrist"
lawmakers (p. 2). In the end, he finds "that presidents' legislative influence is real, often substantial, and,
to date, greatly underestimated" (p. 3).
The author's assessment is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 consists of his introductory overview, as
briefly summarized above. Chapter 2 presents a theory of positive presidential power, focusing on the
Bush II administration's 2001 tax cut efforts in the Senate.

Here, Beckmann attributes the White House's success to its targeted strategy of lobbying and
bargaining with allies, key opponents, and swing voters. He cautions that although this is only one
example, it represents what a president's aides can achieve when they maximize lobbying
techniques for the purpose of advancing agenda-centered and vote-centered strategies (p. 104).
Reviewing the 195 3-2004 record of what he considers to be key votes for presidential legislative success
in Chapter 4, the author proposes a new method for evaluating the potential impact of presidents on
these votes. The two most significant elements are (1) personal involvement of the president and (2)
the extent of his influence at the earliest stages in the legislative process, at the point of fashioning
legislation (p. 126). In Chapter 5 , after testing "whether presidents' influence held up even after
accounting for a myriad of rival explanations, including congressional composition, political context,
and issue specifics, as well as simple random chance" (p. 148), Beckmann asserts that the evidence
showed
presidents to be powerful, but not all powerful, players in federal policymaking. When the
president decides that some particular policy initiative deserves his administration's backing, it is a
great boon to the chances that a new law will supplant the old one. Yet also as predicted, this
potential is constrained by Congress' pivotal voters, limited by political environment, and variable
by issue. Furthermore, although the president's involvement greatly increases the likelihood that a
winning congressional coalition will be assembled, it is no guarantee. Indeed, the nature of
presidential leadership in lawmaking is that, while it generally helps win key votes and pass
preferred laws, it may not in any particular case. (p. 149)
In closing, the author observes that "integral to appraising any president's legacy is examining how
effectively he recognizes and capitalizes on his office's potential" but that equally as important as
any policy outcome is the value of healthy, substantive debate in Congress, as well as the related one
of pressuring members to clearly explain their positions on issues (p.l6l).
This is a useful and methodologically valuable contribution to the quantitative study of presidentialcongressional relations. It is a well-written and well-reasoned account, which likely will have classroom
value as a research model as well as for its contribution to the understanding of presidential leadership in
lawmaking.

AT Political Capital Not Key at Beginning

Political capital is most valuable at the beginning stages of the bill
We agree. In fact, our model shows that presidents may intercede at an earlier point in the
policymaking process by executing a second strategy: an agenda-centered strategy. The essence of
this lobbying option is to get opposing leaders to cut a deal with the White House that is better than
the president could get from exclusively lobbying pivotal voters. The core insight is that inasmuch as
concentrating the presidents lobbying on leading opponents (rather than spreading it across an
interval of pivotal voters) induces those leaders to pull their punches, that is, not offer a rival to the
presidents position or at least something close to it, then this president-sponsored deal need only be
viewed as better than the status quo in the pivotal voters eyes (see Romer and Rosenthal (1978)).
Political capital key early on Influencing behind-the-scenes early gets legislation

passed
Fortunately for those inside the West Wing, some researchers paint a more optimistic picture
regarding presidents potential for passing important planks of their legislative agenda. Covington et
al. (1995), Barrett and Eshbaugh-Soha (2007), Edwards III and Barrett (2000), Kellerman (1984), Light
(1982), Peterson (1990), and Rudalevige (2002) all observe that presidents secure greater support for their
priority items, and when they exert effort pushing them. In addition, Covington (1987) concludes that
White House officials can occasionally win greater support among legislators by working behind
the scenes , while Canes-Wrone (2001, 2005) shows that presidents can induce support from a recalcitrant
Congress by strategically going public when advocating popular proposals (see also Kernell (1993)).
Sullivan (1987, 1988) finds that presidents can amass winning congressional coalitions by changing
members positions as a bill moves through the legislative process.
However, even among these relative optimists, the prescription for presidents appears to be an
ephemeral combination of luck and effort, not a systematic strategy. In discussing the challenge for a

president looking to push legislation on Capitol Hill, Samuel Kernell offers a comparable assessment. He
writes,
The number and variety of choices place great demands upon [presidents] strategic calculation, so much
so that pluralist leadership must be understood as an art...an ability to sense right choices. (Kernell,
1993: 36)
Furthermore, the seemingly paradoxical findings noted above, that is, a general (if modest) pattern of
president-supported legislative success on passage and policy content, but not on key roll-call votes,
remain unexplained.
This paper aims to demystify the White Houses legislative strategies, both their logic and their effects.
Developing a non-cooperative game in which the president allocates scarce political capital to induce
changes in legislators behavior, we deduce two lobby-ing strategies White House officials may
execute and, in turn, investigate their impact on the laws that result. Interestingly, we theorize that
presidents foremost influence comesfrom bargaining with congressional leaders over policy
alternatives before bills reach the floor, not bargaining with pivotal voters for their support once they do.
Precisely because so much of the presidents influence comes in the legislative earlygame (rather than
the endgame), we theorize that typical roll-call-based tests of presidents legislative influence have
missed most of it.

Political Capital Finite

Political capital is finite and key to sway undecided pivotal voters
Of course, presidential political capital is a scarce commodity with a floating value. Even a favorably
situated president enjoys only a finite supply of political capital; he can only promise or pressure so
much. What is more, this capital ebbs and flows as realities and/or perceptions change. So, similarly to
Edwards (1989), we believe presidents bargaining resources cannot fundamentally alter legislators
predispositions, but rather operate at the margins of US lawmaking, however important those
margins may be (see also Bond and Fleisher (1990), Peterson (1990), Kingdon (1989), Jones (1994), and
Rudalevige (2002)). Indeed, our aim is to explicate those margins and show how presidents may
systematically influence them.
Political capital works but diminishing returns makes it finite

Figure 2 illustrates the presidents influence on the policy outcome from vote-centered lobbying when the
presidents goal is to get an outcome as close to his ideal p (which we assume equals one for illustrative
purposes). Several points are noteworthy, starting with the simple one that if the president does not have
any political capital, he proposes the pivotal/median voters predisposition, which passes.
By contrast, inasmuch as the president has capital and allocates it rationally to swing voters, he can
now propose (and pass) bills closer to his ideal. This vote-centered lobbying influence, however,
yields decreasing policy returns for each additional unit of political capital spent, a result that
emerges first because the president must induce more and more pivotal voters to move as he gets
closer and closer to his ideal, and second, because we model legislators as requiring increasing
amounts of political capital for each move away from their ideal policy.

AT No Persuasion (Klein)
1. No internal link the majority of Kleins article is talking about big speeches
like Obamas jobs speech and the State of the Union our internal link is
political capital, not going public
2. Klein admits no alternative passivity more dangerous
Klein, Washington Post columnist, 12
[Ezra, 3-19-12, The New Yorker, The Unpersuaded: Who Listens to a President?,
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/19/120319fa_fact_klein?currentPage=all, accessed 7-8-13,
HG]
After three years in Washington, David Axelrod, who served as the chief strategist for President Obamas
2008 campaign, agrees. Some folks in politics believe this is all just a rhetorical game, but when youre
governing its not, he says. People are viewing their lives through the lens of their own experience, not
waiting for you to describe to them what theyre seeing or feeling. Paul Begala, who helped set the
message in the Clinton White House, puts it more piquantly: The Titanic had an iceberg problem. It did
not have a communications problem. Right now, the President has a jobs problem. If Obama had four-percent unemployment, he would be on Mt. Rushmore already and people would look at Nancy Pelosi like
Lady Gaga.
The question, Begala says, is: What is the alternative to Presidential persuasion? If you dont try it
at all, it guarantees you wont persuade anybody, he says. And, to put it simply, your people in
Congress and in the country will hate you if you dont. Thats the real dilemma for the modern
White House. Aggressive, public leadership is typically ineffective and, during periods of divided
government, can actually make matters worse. But passivity is even more dangerous. In that case,
youre not getting anything done and you look like youre not even trying.
3. Kleins argument is flawed focused too narrowly in specific speeches, and

has no alt Passivity on presidential agenda is worseperceived as weakness
Drum, Mother Jones staff, 12
(Kevin, 3/12/12, Mother Jones, Presidents and the Bully Pulpit, http://www.motherjones.com/kevindrum/2012/03/presidents-and-bully-pulpit, Accessed 7/8/13, JC)
Do presidents really have the power to persuade? Citing the work of political scientists George Edward
and Frances Lee, Ezra Klein writes in the New Yorker this week that they don't. Not much, anyway. When
presidents talk, he argues, all they really do is polarize: instead of persuading, they simply make partisan
divides even starker. So if you didn't have much of an opinion about contraceptive coverage a month ago,

you probably do now and thanks to President Obama's intervention, you're now for it if you're a
Democrat and against it if you're a Republican: [1]
Edwardss work suggests that Presidential persuasion isnt effective with the public. Lees work
suggests that Presidential persuasion might actually have an anti-persuasive effect on the
opposing party in Congress. And, because our system of government usually requires at least
some members of the opposition to work with the President if anything is to get done, that
suggests that the Presidents attempts at persuasion might have the perverse effect of making it
harder for him to govern.
....The question, [Paul] Begala says, is: What is the alternative to Presidential persuasion?
If you dont try it at all, it guarantees you wont persuade anybody, he says. And, to put
it simply, your people in Congress and in the country will hate you if you dont. Thats the
real dilemma for the modern White House. Aggressive, public leadership is typically ineffective
and, during periods of divided government, can actually make matters worse. But passivity is
even more dangerous. In that case, youre not getting anything done and you look like youre not
even trying.
The entire essay is worth a read. It's surprisingly persuasive. And yet, that bolded passage makes a key
point: even if presidential speeches don't accomplish much, we really don't know if shutting up
would be any better. After all, we've never had a modern president who specialized in shutting up.
And since it's not a trait likely to lead to the Oval Office, we probably never will.
I also think that Ezra doesn't really grapple with the strongest arguments on the other side. For one thing,
although there are examples of presidential offensives that failed (George Bush on Social Security
privatization), there are also example of presidential offensives that succeeded (George Bush on
going to war with Iraq). The same is true for broader themes. For example, Edwards found that
"surveys of public opinion have found that support for regulatory programs and spending on
health care, welfare, urban problems, education, environmental protection and aid to minorities
increased rather than decreased during Reagans tenure." OK. But what about the notion that tax
cuts are good for the economy? The public may have already been primed to believe this by the tax
revolts of the late '70s, but I'll bet Reagan did a lot to cement public opinion on the subject. And the
Republican tax jihad has been one of the most influential political movements of the past three
decades.
More generally, I think it's a mistake to focus narrowly on presidential speeches about specific pieces
of legislation. Maybe those really don't do any good. But presidents do have the ability to rally their
own troops, and that matters. That's largely what Obama has done in the contraception debate.
Presidents also have the ability to set agendas. Nobody was talking about invading Iraq until
George Bush revved up his marketing campaign in 2002, and after that it suddenly seemed like the
most natural thing in the world to a lot of people.
Beyond that, it's too cramped to think of the bully pulpit as just the president, just giving a few
speeches. It's more than that. It's a president mobilizing his party and his supporters and doing it
over the course of years. That's harder to measure, and I can't prove that presidents have as much
influence there as I think they do. But I confess that I think they do. Truman made containment national
policy for 40 years, JFK made the moon program a bipartisan national aspiration, Nixon made workingclass resentment the driving spirit of the Republican Party, Reagan channeled the rising tide of the

Christian right and turned that resentment into the modern-day culture wars, and George Bush forged a
bipartisan consensus that the threat of terrorism justifies nearly any defense. It's true that in all of these
cases presidents were working with public opinion, not against it, but I think it's also true that different
presidents might have shaped different consensuses.
Maybe I'm protesting too much. I actually think Ezra has the better of the argument here. But even if
public opinion can rarely be directly challenged and turned around, it can be molded and channeled.
Presidents and their party machines can influence which latent issues stay dormant and which ones
become national obsessions. They can take advantage of events in ways that others can't. After all,
talking is what human beings do. It's hard to credit the idea that it never really accomplishes
anything.

Flip-Flop Internal Link

Flip-flops wreck political capital
Cohen, Fordham University political science professor, 97
(Jeffrey E., 1997, Presidential Responsiveness and Public Policy Making, p. 123)
A president cannot, without good reason, alter his policy stance. And even if he has good reason to
change his policy position on an issue, he may have to bear some costs from doing so. The public
and other political elites may view him as waffling, indecisive, weak, uncommitted, and/or
duplicitous. This seems very much to be one of the major charges against Bill Clintons presidency. After
abandoning his campaign promise of a middle-class tax cut because of budget deficit pressures, Clinton
reoffered a tax cut in the wake of the devastating 1994 midterm elections, in which his party lost control
of Congress. From being publicly cool toward the North American Free Trade pact during his presidential
election campaign, he became an ardent promoter of that policy once in the Oval Office. From these, and
many other occasions, Clinton has developed an image of a waffling politician, one who is forever
changing his mind, perennially trying to stake out the most popular position with the public and not
necessarily a president who is able to lead.

Public

Public Popularity Key to Agenda

The presidents agenda lives and dies by the polls public approval is crucial
Gregg, Clarion political science professor, 97
(Gary, THE PRESIDENTIAL REPUBLIC, 1997, p. 143-44)
But if presidential power thrives by the polls, it might also die by the polls. While popular
presidents tend to get much of what they want and are willing to fight for, unpopular presidents are
trapped and constrained by the polls. As a senior aide to President Carter mused about that president's
problems with Congress controlled by his own party, "When the President is low in public opinion
polls, the members of Congress see little hazard in bucking him...They read the polls and from that
they feel secure in turning their backs on the President with political impunity." Unquestionably,
the success of the Presidents policies bear a tremendous relationship to his popularity in the polls.
Without effective public relations, modern presidents and their programs whither on the vine of
public opinion.
Public opinion has a strong influence on the passage of legislation

Barrett & Eshbaugh-Soha, University of North Texas, 7
[Andrew W. & Matthew, March, Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 1, Presidential Success on the
Substance of Legislation, pp. 100-112, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4623810, Accessed: 715-10)
Public attitudes also should influence the president's bargaining position. Despite evidence to the
contrary (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Collier and Sullivan 1995), presidents, White House staff, and
legislators believe that public approval is important to the president's success in Congress (Edwards
1997; Neustadt 1960; Rivers and Rose 1985). Theoretically, public support will improve the
president's bargaining position as members of Congress will not want to risk alienating their
constituents by opposing a popular president's policy preferences. Therefore, we hypothesize that
the higher his level of approval, the more a final statute will reflect the president's policy
preferences.
Public opinion polls influence presidential agenda

Sparrow, University of Texas at Austin government professor, 8
(Bartholomew H., Who Speaks for the People? The President, the Press, and Public Opinion in the
United States, 10-13-8, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Volume 38, Issue 4, Pages 578-592, Wiley
InterScience, accessed 7-8-9)

Public opinion serves as a metric of presidential leadership with respect to presidential approval
ratings. Presidents and their advisors use public opinion not as an absolute guide, but rather for
tactical purposes, and instrumentally, for reaching particular political ends (Jacobs and Shapiro
2000). In general, political analysts conceive of public opinion as a channel or guide for policy
makers, boundaries beyond which they cannot go but which also offer leeway in terms of the exact path
policy makers take. Public opinion serves as a "permissive limit" for policy makers (Almond 1950; Key
1961; Sobel 2001).

Bully Pulpit Key to Agenda

The president needs the bully pulpitpublic support key to policies
Edwards, Texas A&M University distinguished professor of political science, et al 8
(George C. III, Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies, former Olin Professor of American Government at
Oxford, former John Adams Fellow at the University of London, associate Member of Nuffield College at
the University of Oxford and former director of The Center for Presidential Studies; Martin P.
Wattenberg, University of California Irvine professor of political science; and Robert L. Lineberry,
University of Houston political science professor; Pearson, Government in America: People, Politics and
Policy, Chapter 13: The Presidency,
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_edwards_ga_12/33/8517/2180364.cw/, Accessed 7/8/13, JC)
Perhaps the greatest challenge to any president is to obtain and maintain the public's support.
Because presidents are rarely in a position to command others to comply with their wishes, they
must rely on persuasion. The necessity of public support leads the White House to employ public
relations techniques similar to those used to publicize products. Much of the energy the White House
devotes to public relations is aimed at increasing the president's public approval. The reason is simple: the
higher the president stands in the polls, the easier it is to persuade others to support presidential
initiatives. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, citizens seem to focus on the president's efforts and
stands on issues rather than on personality ("popularity") or simply how presidential policies affect
them (the "pocketbook"). Job-related personal characteristics of the president, such as integrity and
leadership skills, also play an important role in influencing presidential approval.
Commentators on the presidency often refer to it as a "bully pulpit," implying that presidents
can persuade or even mobilize the public to support their policies if they are skilled enough
communicators. Presidents frequently do attempt to obtain public support for their policies with
speeches over the radio or television or speeches to large groups. All presidents since Truman have
had media advice from experts on such matters as lighting, makeup, stage settings, camera angles, and
even clothing.
Obama can use the bully pulpit effectivelymedia coverage

Washington Post 11
(Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake, 7/11/11, Battling the bully pulpit ,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/battling-the-bullypulpit/2011/07/10/gIQAI1oz7H_blog.html, Accessed 7/8/13, JC)
Obamas heightened public profile is a reminder of the power of the presidency. Obama knows that
when he holds a press conference, every cable network will carry it live in its entirety and then
spend the remainder of the day poring over every pronouncement.

That level of coverage ensures that Obama can drive whatever message he likes into the public
consciousness. Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and even the Republicans
running for president in 2012 cant hope to match that sort of presidential bully pulpit.
(Dont forget how President Bill Clinton used the bully pulpit to score a political win over then-House
Speaker Newt Gingrich during the government shutdown of 1995/1996.)
The bully pulpit matterspresidential mobilization of his own party drives items on
his agenda
Drum, Mother Jones staff, 12
(Kevin, 3/12/12, Mother Jones, Presidents and the Bully Pulpit, http://www.motherjones.com/kevindrum/2012/03/presidents-and-bully-pulpit, Accessed 7/8/13, JC)
More generally, I think it's a mistake to focus narrowly on presidential speeches about specific pieces of
legislation. Maybe those really don't do any good. But presidents do have the ability to rally their own
troops, and that matters. That's largely what Obama has done in the contraception debate.
Presidents also have the ability to set agendas. Nobody was talking about invading Iraq until George
Bush revved up his marketing campaign in 2002, and after that it suddenly seemed like the most
natural thing in the world to a lot of people.
Beyond that, it's too cramped to think of the bully pulpit as just the president, just giving a few
speeches. It's more than that. It's a president mobilizing his party and his supporters and doing it
over the course of years. That's harder to measure, and I can't prove that presidents have as much
influence there as I think they do. But I confess that I think they do. Truman made containment
national policy for 40 years, JFK made the moon program a bipartisan national aspiration, Nixon
made working-class resentment the driving spirit of the Republican Party, Reagan channeled the
rising tide of the Christian right and turned that resentment into the modern-day culture wars, and
George Bush forged a bipartisan consensus that the threat of terrorism justifies nearly any defense.
It's true that in all of these cases presidents were working with public opinion, not against it, but I think
it's also true that different presidents might have shaped different consensuses.

Interest Groups Internal Link

The president needs interest groups to shape political coalitionskey to promoting
the agenda
(Jeffrey E., PhD in political science from University of Michigan, September 2012, Presidential Studies
Quarterly, Vol. 42, Issue 3, Interest Groups and Political Approval,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2012.03988.x/abstract, p. 451-452, Accessed
7/8/13, JC)
The direct effect of issue position on approval is important for another reason. It demonstrates that
approval is not solely a function of valence issues, but also of positional issues, which has
implications for presidential representation and accountability. Presidents, based on these findings,
are held accountable for the policy direction that they steer as well as whether their chosen policies
work well or not. In selecting policies to pursue, presidents thus have to consider not only how well
the policy works, but who will be receptive to differing policy approaches. Some issues, in particular
positional issues, may not have uniform impacts on voterssome will win or benefit from the course
the president selects, while others will lose.
In thinking about the course to select on positional issues, presidents may enlist and target some
interest groups. Especially in an era of polarized parties and fragmented media, presidents may
face extra difficulty in building support coalitions. In this political climate, interest groups become
increasingly important for presidential coalition building efforts. With this in mind, the second
question raised in the article was whether interest groups can influence member attitudes about the
president.
Using the 2006 CCES, I found that membership in an interest group that was aligned with the
parties or ideology was associated with approval of the president. However, we should not expect all
groups to affect members political opinions. The information that interest groups provide to
members will have greater impact on hard as opposed to easy issues. Comparing group
membership for issues characterized as easier (abortion, the Iraq War) versus harder (Social
Reform, the environment), this is what the analysis found. When an issue is hard, interest group
membership tightens the linkage between that issue and presidential approval.
Presidential power limited by partisanship and media biasnow rely on interest

groups to shape public opinion
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2012.03988.x/abstract, p. 432, Accessed 7/8/13,
JC)

This article asks whether interest groups can affect their members evaluation of the president. Recent
research suggest the growing importance of interest group support to presidents, especially as the parties
have polarized and the media have fragmented, two trends that limit the ability of presidents to generate
support in the public at-large (Cohen 2008, 2010; Holmes 2008). Party polarization reduces the
likelihood that opposition party members will support the president ( Bond and Fleisher 2001;
Jacobson 2007; Newman and Siegle 2010). A fragmented media reduces the size of the audience for
presidential communications, simultaneously forcing the president to compete with other media
voices for the publics attention (Baum and Kernell 1999; Young and Perkins 2005).
As a consequence, presidents have turned to other sources for support, like interest groups. The
literature on presidential-interest groups ties, however, focuses primarily on institutional-level linkages,
for instance, the willingness of interest groups as organizations to support the president, to coordinate
their congressional lobbying efforts with the presidents, etc. (Loomis 2009; Peterson 1992; Pika 1991,
1999, 2009). Although knowledge of the institutional linkages between presidents and interest groups is
scant, even less is known about the factors associated with the ability of the president to generate support
from members of interest groups, or even whether interest group membership is relevant to member
opinions about the president.
Scholars believe that interest groups may influence opinions on issues: Citizens judgments about . .
. issues rely crucially on the descriptions and rhetorical representations of political elites and other
information sources, including the media and interest groups ( Joslyn and Haider-Markel 2002, 690).
Several studies suggest a linkage between group membership and approval of the president.
Interest groups control public opinion of president on policy implementation

grants voter support on hard issues
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2012.03988.x/abstract, p. 434-435, Accessed
7/8/13, JC)
Type of issue will mediate the effect of group media on members approval of the president. Carmines
and Stimsons (1980) distinction between easy and hard issues provides a good starting place
for understanding how issue characteristics mediate the effect of specialized group media on
members. Carmines and Stimsons conceptualization of an easy versus hard issue refers to the inherent
qualities of the issue. Since their introduction of the concept, studies have offered alternative ways of
distinguishing easy versus hard issues.
To Carmines and Stimson, an easy issue evokes a gut reaction from the voter; little effort or thought is
required to take a stance on it. Easy issues are more likely to be symbolic, have been on the agenda
for a long time, and deal more with policy ends than means (1980, 80). In contrast, hard issues are
more complex and technical than easy ones, debate often centers on policy means and

implementation rather than ends, and the issue may have arrived recently on the political agenda.
Carmines and Stimson demonstrate that more informed and politically sophisticated voters weigh hard
issues more heavily in their vote choice than less informed and sophisticated voters.3
We are more likely to observe interest group effects on member approval on hard as opposed to easy
issues. The general news media are likely to cover easy issues voluminously. In fact, high news coverage
levels help make an issue easier for voters. Hard issues may not receive as much general news media
attention. The technical and complex nature of many hard issues renders them more difficult for the
general news media to provide in depth and detailed coverage. Although technical debates may
involve intense conflicts, such debates may be very dry or abstract, attributes that news organizations,
concerned about paying subscribers, do not think will attract subscribers as much as the clash of
personalities or political gain, themes often important in news coverage. Interest groups
communications do not suffer these limitations on issue coverage and may have incentives, primarily
member interest and the mobilization of members, to cover hard issues in greater depth than found
in the general news medial. By doing so, they provide members with information not generally
available from the general news media.
If the general news media cover an issue profusely and in depth, which is likely the case for many easy
issues, communications from the interest groups specialized media may not add to the members store of
information and may not prime or frame the issue beyond the effects due to exposure to general news
coverage. If the issue is easy, the advocacy presented in the groups specialized media may have little
impact on member understanding of the issue and/or the implications of the presidents action. However,
when the issue is not covered much or in depth in the general news media, generally the case for
hard issues, interest group media provide new information to its members, information that they
would not necessarily possess otherwise or would find very costly to collect and process. And the issue
advocacy found in the interest group media may be especially helpful for the member in
interpreting, making sense of, the issue and the presidents action on the issue. This is more likely
for hard than easy issues.

AT Winners Win

Not a Win
Contentious debate ensures plan is not perceived as a victory
Mann, Brookings Governance Studies senior fellow, 10
[Thomas, Brookings, November, American Politics on the Eve of the Midterm Elections,
http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2010/11_midterm_elections_mann.aspx, accessed 6-20-11]
The well-documented successes of the financial stabilisation and stimulus initiatives are invisible to
a public reacting to the here and now, not to the counterfactual of how much worse it might have
been. The painfully slow recovery from the global financial crisis and Great Recession have led
most Americans to believe these programmes have failed and as a consequence they judge the
President and Congress harshly.
HIGHLY POLARISED That perception of failure has been magnified by the highly contentious
process by which Obamas initiatives have been adopted in Congress. America has in recent years
developed a highly polarised party system, with striking ideological differences between the parties and
unusual unity within each. But these parliamentary-like parties operate in a governmental system in which
majorities are unable readily to put their programmes in place.
Republicans adopted a strategy of consistent, unified, and aggressive opposition to every major
component of the Presidents agenda, eschewing negotiation, bargaining and compromise, even on
matters of great national import. The Senate filibuster has been the indispensable weapon in killing,
weakening, slowing, or discrediting all major legislation proposed by the Democratic majority.
Link outweighs winners win turn

Silber, Political Science PhD, 7
[Marissa Silber, Political Science PhD Student at the University of Florida, Prepared for delivery at the
2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 30th-September 2nd, 2007,
WHAT MAKES A PRESIDENT QUACK?
UNDERSTANDING LAME DUCK STATUS THROUGH THE EYES OF THE MEDIA AND
POLITICIANS,
http://convention3.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/1/0/8/9/p210893_index.html,
Accessed 7/9/12, THW]
Important to the discussion of political capital is whether or not it can be replenished over a term. If a
President expends political capital on his agenda, can it be replaced ? Light suggests that capital
declines over time public approval consistently falls: midterm losses occur (31). Capital can be
rebuilt, but only to a limited extent. The decline of capital makes it difficult to access information,
recruit more expertise and maintain energy. If a lame duck President can be defined by a loss of

political capital, this paper helps determine if such capital can be replenished or if a lame duck can
accomplish little. Before determining this, a definition of a lame duck President must be developed.

Winners Win Theory Flawed

Winners win isnt true for Obama
Galston, Brookings, Governance Studies, Senior Fellow 10
(William, 11-4-10, President Barack Obamas Two Years: Policy Accomplishments, Political
Difficulties, Brookings , http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2010/11/04-obama-galston, accessed
7-9-12 FFF)
Second, the administration believed that success would breed successthat the momentum from
one legislative victory would spill over into the next. The reverse was closer to the truth: with each
difficult vote, it became harder to persuade Democrats from swing districts and states to cast the
next one. In the event, House members who feared that they would pay a heavy price if they
supported cap-and-trade legislation turned out to have a better grasp of political fundamentals than
did administration strategists.
Winners win theory is false - Congress too polarized

Mann, Brookings, Governance Studies, Senior Fellow 10
(Thomas E, November 2010, AMERICAN POLITICS ON THE EVE OF THE MIDTERM
ELECTIONS, Brookings, http://www.google.com/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.brookings.edu%2F~%2Fmedia%2FFiles%2Frc%2Farticles
%2F2010%2F11_midterm_elections_mann
%2F11_midterm_elections_mann.pdf&ei=QaL7T6qvO8WhrAGpwNyLCQ&usg=AFQjCNHgxxtq3WW
IhoKbhRhv2P1Q0oPtjw, accessed 7-9-12 FFF)
That perception of failure has been magnified by the highly contentious process by which Obamas
initiatives have been adopted in Congress. America has in recent years developed a highly polarised
party system, with striking ideological differences between the parties and unusual unity within each.
But these parliamentary-like parties operate in a governmental system in which majorities are unable
readily to put their programmes in place.
Republicans adopted a strategy of consistent, unified, and aggressive opposition to every major
component of the Presidents agenda, eschewing negotiation, bargaining and compromise, even on
matters of great national import. The Senate filibuster has been the indispensable weapon in killing,
weakening, slowing, or discrediting all major legislation proposed by the Democratic majority.
Health care disproves winners win

Galston, Brookings Institute Governance Studies Senior Fellow, 10

[William A., Senior Fellow of Governance Studies @ Brookings, 11/4/10, Brookings Institute, President
Barack Obamas First Two Years: Policy Accomplishments, Political Difficulties,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2010/11/04-obama-galston , Accessed 7/9/13]
The legislative process that produced the health care bill was especially damaging. It lasted much too
long and featured side-deals with interest groups and individual senators, made in full public view. Much
of the public was dismayed by what it saw. Worse, the seemingly endless health care debate
strengthened the view that the presidents agenda was poorly aligned with the economic concerns of
the American people. Because the administration never persuaded the public that health reform
was vital to our economic future, the entire effort came to be seen as diversionary, even antidemocratic. The health reform bill was surely a moral success; it may turn out to be a policy success; but
it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it wasand remainsa political liability. Indeed, most of the
Obama agenda turned out to be very unpopular. Of five major policy initiatives undertaken during
the first two years, only onefinancial regulatory reformenjoyed majority support. In a September
2010 Gallup survey, 52 percent of the people disapproved of the economic stimulus, 56 percent
disapproved of both the auto rescue and the health care bill, and an even larger majority61 percent
rejected the bailout of financial institutions.[v] Democrats hopes that the people would change their
minds about the partys signature issueuniversal health insuranceafter the bill passed were not
fulfilled. (It remains to be seen whether sentiment will change in coming years as provisions of the bill
are phased inthat is, if they survive what will no doubt be stiff challenges in both Congress and the
states.)

Winners Win Backfires

Winners win isnt true going public backfires raising the salience hurts the
president
Klein, Washington Post columnist, 3-19-12
[Ezra, New Yorker, The Unpersuaded? Who listens to a President?,
MSG]
Representative Jim Cooper, a Democrat from Tennessee, takes Lees thesis even further. The more
high-profile the communication effort, the less likely it is to succeed, he says. In education
reform, I think Obama has done brilliantly, largely because its out of the press. But on higherprofile things, like deficit reduction, hes had a much tougher time.
Edwardss work suggests that Presidential persuasion isnt effective with the public. Lees work
suggests that Presidential persuasion might actually have an anti-persuasive effect on the opposing
party in Congress. And, because our system of government usually requires at least some members
of the opposition to work with the President if anything is to get done, that suggests that the
Presidents attempts at persuasion might have the perverse effect of making it harder for him to
govern.
[Lee = Frances Lee, political science professor at the University of Maryland]
Hostile political climate means even wins are losses for Obama
Baker, New York Times White House correspondent, 10
[Peter Baker, foreign policy reporter, 10/12/10, NYT, Education of a President,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html, Accessed 7/9/13]
But it is possible to win the inside game and lose the outside game. In their darkest moments, White
House aides wonder aloud whether it is even possible for a modern president to succeed, no matter
how many bills he signs. Everything seems to conspire against the idea: an implacable opposition with
little if any real interest in collaboration, a news media saturated with triviality and conflict, a
culture that demands solutions yesterday, a societal cynicism that holds leadership in low regard. Some
White House aides who were ready to carve a new spot on Mount Rushmore for their boss two years ago
privately concede now that he cannot be another Abraham Lincoln after all. In this environment, they
have increasingly concluded, it may be that every modern president is going to be, at best, average.
Were all a lot more cynical now, one aide told me. The easy answer is to blame the Republicans, and
White House aides do that with exuberance. But they are also looking at their own misjudgments, the

hubris that led them to think they really could defy the laws of politics. Its not that we believed our own
press or press releases, but there was definitely a sense at the beginning that we could really change
Washington, another White House official told me. Arrogance isnt the right word, but we were
overconfident. The biggest miscalculation in the minds of most Obama advisers was the assumption
that he could bridge a polarized capital and forge genuinely bipartisan coalitions. While Republican
leaders resolved to stand against Obama, his early efforts to woo the opposition also struck many as
halfhearted. If anybody thought the Republicans were just going to roll over, we were just terribly
mistaken, former Senator Tom Daschle, a mentor and an outside adviser to Obama, told me. Im
not sure anybody really thought that, but I think we kind of hoped the Republicans would go away. And
obviously they didnt do that. Senator Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the upper chamber and
Obamas ally from Illinois, said the Republicans were to blame for the absence of bipartisanship. I think
his fate was sealed, Durbin said. Once the Republicans decided they would close ranks to defeat him,
that just made it extremely difficult and dragged it out for a longer period of time. The American people
have a limited attention span. Once you convince them theres a problem, they want a solution. Gov. Ed
Rendell of Pennsylvania, though, is among the Democrats who grade Obama harshly for not being
more nimble in the face of opposition. B-plus, A-minus on substantive accomplishments, he told
me, and a D-plus or C-minus on communication. The health care legislation is an incredible
achievement and the stimulus program was absolutely, unqualifiedly, enormously successful, in
Rendells judgment, yet Obama allowed them to be tarnished by critics. They lost the
communications battle on both major initiatives, and they lost it early, said Rendell, an ardent
Hillary Clinton backer who later became an Obama supporter. We didnt use the president in either
stimulus or health care until we had lost the spin battle.

Media Undermines Winners Win

Media framing undercuts the effectiveness of presidential promotions
The Media Filter

Obama's persistent, substantive and in-depth comments raise an intriguing question: why would
shrewd observers conclude that Obama did little to rally the public behind the ACA when he was "going
public," as presidency research predicts? The answer lies less with Obama and his lack of effort than with
America's information system.
Table 2 shows that the national press of record only covered 45% of all Obama's statements on
health reform. Its reporting was even scarcer after the ACA's passage, when its coverage dropped to
20% . In other words, at the moment when Americans most needed to learn about the ACA's contents,
only one out of five of Obama's addresses about health reform was conveyed to the country.
Even the limited coverage of Obama's speeches about health reform often avoided in-depth reporting
on the substantive components of reform in favor of conveying conflict among politicians and their
strategic schemes. More than two-thirds of all press stories focused on tactical maneuvering for
power and advantage; only 13% primarily reported the policy content of the president's addresses; and
the remaining portion conveyed both the policy and politics of reform.5
Take, for example, Obama's momentous January 2010 State of the Union plea to continue to pursue
reform after Scott Brown's startling win of Ted Kennedy's senate seat. To a coveted national audience, he
made the case for the economic, fiscal, and moral urgency of action and outlined his approach to "protect
every American from the worst practices of the insurance industry," expand access by "giv[ing] small
businesses and uninsured Americans a chance to choose an affordable health care plan," and "require
every insurance plan to cover preventive care" (Obama 2010). The coverage by the New York Times
(Stolberg 2010) never mentioned his reforms to establish insurance company regulations, greater
affordability, and improved access to prevention. Instead, the coverage focused nearly uniformly on
political intrigue: Obama's address was framed as "com[ing] at a particularly rocky point in his
presidency," presenting a contrasting with his campaign "promise to change the culture of Washington,"
and beating up on both parties in Congress - he was presented as "chastis[ing] Republicans for
working in lock-step against him and . . . warn[ing] Democrats to stiffen their political spines." For those
who only learned of the president's speech through the media, they would likely be unaware of the
tangible reforms that were in the works and might be reasonably cynical of Washington playing politics
with their lives (Cappella and Jamieson 1997).
The media's muted coverage of health reform and preoccupation with conflict and intrigue
frustrated Obama, as it had his predecessors including George W Bush, who derisively referred to the

press as "the filter." The "virtues of this legislation for Americans with insurance and Americans without
it," Obama opined, "have been entirely obscured by fear and distraction" both by opponents and by press
reports that "breathlessly declar[e] what something means for a political party, without really talking
much about what it means for a country."
The combination of a well -funded and carefully honed opposition and the media's incomplete and
selective reporting of Obama's public promotions contributed to public ambivalence and confusion about
health reform - the end-state that has alarmed the President's critics. Six out of 10 Americans report not
knowing enough about the personal impact of ACA, and most remain unaware of the core features
of the law - nearly all of which enjoy majority backing even among people who identify as Republicans,
according to Kaiser Family Foundation surveys.7 Nonetheless, the public is divided or a bit opposed to
reform, with favorable and unfavorable views generally in the 40% range in 26 Kaiser surveys since ACA
was signed into law.8
The media portrays politics as a stage for wins and losses crowding out vital
dissemination of policy, this undermines presidential promotion
Presidential Communications -within the Information System

Obama joins a large pool of presidents who sought to capitalize on their unrivalled access to the media
and to the presidency's enormous capacities for promotion but failed to impact public opinion as they
desired. President George W Bush devoted enormous effort and resources to rallying the country to
support the Iraq War and to back his efforts to partially privatize Social Security; neither campaign moved
public opinion in the directions he sought (Edwards 2007). Bill Clinton launched an ambitious public
push for health reform in 1993 and was rewarded with stronger public opposition within a year of
unveiling his proposal.
Four components of the information system constrain and condition the effectiveness of White House
promotion. First, the effectiveness of presidential appeals depends on how the media process them
based on their organizational incentives and processes. The media's search for audience and pursuit
of general (if unevenly embraced) norms of informing the public motivate journalists and editors to
report on public affairs in ways that will attract and entertain (Graber and Holyk 2011). What the
president says - no matter who he is and what gilded words he chooses - will routinely be subject to
selective and refracted coverage by editors and reporters who choose (based on their own incentives
and norms) what to cover, how to frame it, and who to use as sources (Just 201 1; Patterson 1994). The
communications revolution - cable stations and social media networking as well as online news sites and
news-aggregating services - have atomized the shared public square into numerous, disconnected
cubbyholes that reinforce existing perceptions and attitudes and resist presidential appeals (Shapiro and
Jacobs 2011). In addition to erecting new hurdles to presidential persuasion, the information

revolution has further complicated presidential promotions by reducing audience size and
segmenting it; presidential failure has promoted them to redirect their appeals from broad national
audiences to narrower subgroups of partisans, local communities, and other slices of voters (Baum
and Kernell 1999; Cohen 2009; Wattenberg 2004).
The second component is the intersection of the media and politics, and the media's close coverage of
political conflict (Patterson 1994). The fixation of the traditional print and broadcast media with
political conflict and strategy may be lamentable from the perspective of public education, but it
accurately reflects partisan polarization that, for instance, defined the ACA's legislative journey - no
Republicans voted for it while Democrats overwhelming backed it - as well as earlier health reform
episodes (Cappella and Jamieson 1997). Indeed, the media reacts to presidential promotions not by
passively accepting them but by portraying them as staged orchestrations and by expanding
coverage of opponents (Jacobs 2010).
The third component is the public's existing set of attitudes and style of information processing. From
the start, the president's promotions face outright suspicion from a large proportion of the country
that affiliates with the opposing party. Worse, today's historic polarization nearly ensures potent
opposition to White House initiatives and sophisticated countermobilization strategies (Cameron and
Park 201 1 ; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000). For presidents, their promotions contend with ingrained
patterns of information processing in which oppositional framings bypass critical cognitive
inspection (Druckman 2004; Strickland, Taber, and Lodge 201 1). The health reform episode illustrates
what political psychologists call "motivated reasoning": warnings by reform opponents about "death
panels" and personal threats, which the media extensively reported, had the effect of priming many
Americans to retrieve entrenched partisan beliefs and attitudes about government and to grow uncertain
about, or turn against, reform.
Fourth, the design of policy has powerful and potentially enduring effects on public attitudes and
behaviors that are difficult for presidents to override (Mettler and Soss 2004). In the case of health
reform, the public's muted awareness and evaluations of the ACA were in part a function of the law's
policy design and, in particular, the decision of lawmakers to delay implementation of tangible benefits to
2014 and to rely on "submerged" policy tools (such as tax subsidies and the state option to avoid or mute
the government's public involvement in operating the new insurance programs) (Mettler 2011).
In short, presidents face enormous hurdles in delivering their message through the information
system. The mutually reinforcing incentives of the information system routinely work to crowd out
meaningful reporting on policy and feeds cynicism about the purpose of government (Cappella and
Jamieson 1997).
Institutional and informational systems restrict the power of presidential promotion


Putting Public Presidency in Context
Disciplinary borrowings from the field of the "public presidency" have feasted on the "public" dimension
of White House promotions but overlooked the second component, which references the seminal shift
from studying the individual of the president to investigating the institution o the presidency. The field's
research finds that the origins, forms, and conditional effects of presidential promotions are a
function of both the organizational processes of the executive office as well as broader sets of
relationships with the country's information system, institutional contexts, and organizational
rivals.
The case of health reform spotlights the analytic significance of situating personal presidential
behavior within the institutional and organizational contexts of American politics. What is striking
about Obama's handling of health reform is not that he failed to make frequent and compelling public
presentation - a failure that could be attributed to his personal flaws and limitations. Rather, what stands
out is that he did devote substantial time and resources to public promotion and still was unable to
produce favorable press coverage and public opinion. The answer to this puzzle can be found in the
institutional and informational systems that impose structural limits on White House promotions
and open up opportunities for strategic choices to capitalize on the capacities of the presidency and
exploit the weaknesses of opponents. Although a detailed analysis is not feasible, I outline core features
of America's broader political context that condition the effects of presidential promotions.

Going Public Doesnt Influence Congress

Presidential promotion doesnt translate to legislative outcomes even if public gets
on board
Quarterly, Vol. 43 Issue 1, P. 26-27 ProQuest, AMS]
Institutions and Interests Trump Presidential Appeals

Presidency research delivers a double blow to exaggerated claims about the general efficacy of
presidential promotions: not only do they rarely deliver what the White House and its supporters
expect, but the preoccupation with them distracts from the dominant dynamics of policy making entrenched institutional and organizational processes. Put another way, even if presidents (including
Obama) impact public opinion as they desire, rigorous research provides no reasonable grounds to a
general expectation that legislative outcomes (including health reform) are likely to meaningfully
change in ways that would avoid compromises, delays, and deadlocks.
Of particular importance are interbranch relations. They drive national decision making and routinely
blunt or override the personal appeals of presidents for public support, helping to account for the
selectivity and contingency of presidential efforts to move public opinion.
Presidents can barnstorm the country to champion their proposals, but their success in Congress is
largely a function of its partisan composition: fellow partisans generally support the White House,
legislators in the opposing party usually oppose the administration, and the probability of both tendencies
has increased as partisan polarization has widened (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1989; Jacobson
2003). The biggest factor in the passage of comprehensive national health reform was unified Democratic
Party control of the legislative and executive branches and the largest congressional majorities in decades.
Fellow partisans regularly support presidents as a general rule, but even this bond does not guarantee
White House success: one party does not typically control both lawmaking branches (as Obama
discovered after the 2010 midterm elections) and presidents face resistance from fellow partisans who do
not share their philosophical orientation (as exhibited by the splits within the Democratic Party over
health reform in 2009-10). These structural features, and not Obama's personal temperament or
promotional skills, set the parameters of what was feasible.
While partisan and ideological forces predispose certain legislative outcomes, the institutional rules
and procedures of Congress influence the form, pace, and tenor of lawmaking. One set of picket fences
consist of the increasing and broadening use of the 60-vote filibuster requirement that the opposition
deploys to bog down and block legislation (Bondurant 201 1). On health reform, the filibuster required
the votes of all 58 Democrats and two independents, empowering each senator to bargain for goodies
under the threat of withholding his or her support and sending reform to defeat. The infamous
"Cornhusker Kickback" was struck to secure one of the final Democratic votes for the ACA - Nebraska's

Ben Nelson. Adding still more opportunity for delay, deadlock, and doom were legislative budget rules
that positioned the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as the official scorekeeper on the revenue and
costs of new legislation. (See Jacobs and Skocpol 2012 for detailed discussion of these dynamics.)
Presidential promotional efforts to dictate the pace, form, and disposition of legislation are
routinely trumped by the durable and thorough-going influences of a turbo-charged system of
institutional warfare.
Going public doesnt solve the link health care proves Obamas persistent
promotion of health care failed to rally support
The tendency of well-developed research fields to overfill is well known; a corresponding challenge is the
tendency to misunderstand or misapply that research by scholars plowing different plots. The mistaken or
incomplete interpretation of research on the public presidency presents a particularly egregious case of
poor harvesting. Although political observers and scholars outside the public presidency field project
"going public" as a highly influential weapon, scholars in the field converge on modest expectations
in which presidential promotions have limited, selective, and conditional effects. This pattern is
illustrated through content analyses of Barack Obama's speeches and the media's coverage of them. The
findings correspond with the expectations of the public presidency field: Obama conducted extensive
public promotions of his signature legislative accomplishment-health reform-and his efforts failed
to move media coverage, public opinion, or the legislative process. As research on the public
presidency expands its scope and reach, there is a growing opportunity to correct its misapplications and,
more positively, to build an unusually diverse research community that spans political theory and the
social sciences.
Doug Arnold (1982) distinguished between "overtilled" and "undertilled" areas of research in American
politics. His purpose was to encourage a reallocation of scholarly labor from extensively studied areas
with low and diminishing yields of new knowledge to fields that have "largely been abandoned, although
they still offer great promise, [or have] . . . never been well cultivated at all" (92).
Attention to the allocation of research labor needs to be complemented by scrutiny of another dimension the harvesting and distribution of research outside fields and subfields to the broader discipline devoted to
studying politics and policy. Though these research fields tend to produce veritable warehouses of
findings, they are poorly understood or misapplied by scholars plowing different plots. In these cases, the
misallocation problem that Arnold identified becomes compounded by a breakdown in the distribution
system that delivers the fruits of labor to scholarly consumers. Gaps between the specialized research of
particular fields or subfields (what I refer to as "field research") and broader disciplinary learning put
researchers at risk of adopting assumptions and theoretical expectations about fields outside their areas of
expertise that have been proven flawed or false. Such underharvesting raises questions about the way the

political science community operates and the degree to which that community generates new knowledge
through cumulative processes of learning and interaction.
The purpose of this article is to use research on the promotional presidency to stimulate a discussion
about cross-field engagement and intellectual dialogue within political science. As an enormous body of
research on the U.S. president's public promotions piles up, political observers and scholars outside
the presidency field continue to mistakenly or incompletely interpret the research and, in cases
where they do not draw on political science research at all, they have been prone to adopt
unfounded assumptions. Initial critical assessments of Barack Obama's first term in office, and
specifically his public promotion of health reform, illustrate this general pattern, and pose a
revealing puzzle: Obama engaged in public promotion and his efforts failed to move public opinion
or the legislative process. While Obama's sobering experience with health reform may be
surprising to popular commentators and some political scientists, it is consistent (as I discuss shortly)
with a large body of presidency research - throwing the underharvesting challenge into relief.
Understanding the conditional nature of presidential promotion requires appreciation for the
interaction of agency and structure. White House appeals for public support often collide with
structural constraints cemented into America's institutional and informational systems. Yet,
institutions and interests also open up choices for strategic presidents who can adjust to lure allies and
skillfully persuade them to deploy their institution resources to serve the president's agenda.
Going public has little effect on Congress only targeted groups achieve minimal
effects
This research also challenges the causal chain in which "going public" is expected to mobilize public
support that, in turn, pressures members of Congress and other policy makers to adopt the
president's policies. Investigations repeatedly report that presidential promotions have limited
impacts on Congress. Presidents who rely on orchestrated appeals frequently find themselves
exerting only "marginal" influence on lawmaking (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1989, 2007) and
victims of squandered political capital, frustrated public expectations, and potentially missed
opportunities for privately negotiated pacts (Baum 2004; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000; Jerit 2008).
While extensive research suggests minimal effects of presidential promotion, it does not justify
"writing off presidential leadership as totally ineffective" (Tedin, Rottinghaus, and Rodgers 201 1,
506). A more precise distillation of the research is that presidential appeals fall short of White House
objectives but can exert modest selective influence under certain conditions. Modest influence by
presidents has been detected in discrete components of the policy process, specifically in agendasetting, where a president can moderately elevate Americans' attention to his initiatives, even though
he is unable to exclude other issues (Cohen 1982, 1995; Edwards and Barrett 2000; Peterson I99O). The

White House may enjoy more influence when it has shifted from seeking to influence "the nation" to
targeting subgroups of party activists, local communities, and discrete voting blocs (Cohen 2009;
Druckman and Jacobs 201 1; Tedin, Rottinghaus, and Rodgers 2011; Wattenberg 2004). These selective
effects tend to be a bit more likely under conditions of relatively muted public opposition and
countermobilization (Cameron and Park 2011) and elevated public support (Canes-Wrone 2001, 2006;
Page and Shapiro 1984).

Going Public Doesnt Influence Public

Presidential promotion is ineffective in creating a mindset shift amongst the public

Quarterly, Vol. 43 Issue 1, P. 18, ProQuest, AMS]
Research on the Public Presidency and Disciplinary Presumptions

Over the past three decades, the expanding field of presidential research has developed more sophisticated
and diverse analytic approaches, and devoted enormous time and effort to studying the president's
widening commitment to promote himself and his policies to Americans and thereby go "over the heads"
of Washington lawmakers and power brokers. This shift produced the large and vibrant subfield of the
"public presidency" (Edwards 1983), which has developed in two broad directions. The first is a
meticulous charting of the frequency of "going public" as well as its forms and audiences (Kernell 1986).
Researchers trace the rise of the public presidency to changing norms of governance and speech
(Tulis 1987), to the dissipation of power and the onset of policy paralysis (Kernell 1986), and to
communications strategies that are geared toward mobilizing public support in order to augment
scarce political resources and satisfy voter expectations (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000).
The second strand is a rigorous examination of the effects of presidential public promotions, which
generally - though not uniformly - stresses the limits on White House efforts to mold Americans to
their designs. George Edwards enjoys the distinction of both helping to launch the "public presidency"
field (1983) and documenting its ineffectiveness in manufacturing public preferences or higher
approval ratings (1996a, 1996b, 2??3, 2007). Recent summaries of "minimal effects" research
confirm that "evidence is mounting that presidents find difficulty in leading public opinion" (Tedin,
Rottinghaus, and Rodgers 2011, 506) and that their "effectiveness [is] more problematic [than often
assumed]" (Cameron and Park 2011, 443).

AT Winners Win [Hirsh version]

They say Winners Win but1. Winners win is not true. Political capital is not regenerated from a political
win and it is finite. If Obama goes through heated debate he will have to
invest lots of energy and debate which will irritate people that he needs later
he has to expend something to get a bill passed
2. Illogical- If winners win was true, then presidents would never lose because
they would always generate more capital after a win which would just lead
them always winning.
3. Theres a massive inconsistency in his argument- he says Johnson was able to
gain momentum by immediately attacking the biggest controversies, but then
acknowledges that Obama was completely drained by the passage of
Obamacare- that disproves that wins carry over
4. Hirsh outlines no threshold to winning does it have to be double-digit
majority or a landslide? Can it be a very marginal win? Who has to perceive
it as a win? How many wins can Obama get until he loses?
5. Hirsch bases his winners win arguments on LBJs presidency political
theories have changed new congress, different times and a new president
makes PC necessary because Obama cant force their way through bills

6. And Hirsh interprets it the wrong way he says that people will want to get
on the winning side after the passage of a tough bill, but it goes the other way
if he looks unpopular pushing legislation, people will want to get off the
losing side and will turn against him. Even if bandwagoning is true, Midterm
elections make bandwagoning impossibleno republican will let Obama
twist there arm its a matter of Obamas influence.
7. Winners win is false on controversial issuesHirshs analysis on loss of
political capital after the health care debacle proves that even if victories on
easy bills sustain Obamas influence, its not true for divisive issues. The plan
crushes his momentum and at worst, means the plan cant garner offense off
the link turn.
8. Obamas also the focal point of political issues no one knows other
government figures and shown in the media when he pushes unpopular
legislation, congress and the public blame him
9. The only empirical defense of this claim is about Lyndon B. Johnson, but it
also says that his political wins concerned issues that appealed to public
consciousness- if anything, it just means that public opinion matters to
political capital, not that wins build unstoppable momentum
10. FDR proves winners win is not true- he politically won with New Deal
programs but couldnt pack the Supreme Court- also proves PC is limited
Hirsh, National Journal Chief Correspondent, 13
[Michael, Updated: May 30, 2013 | 12:26 a.m., February 7, 2013 | 8:10 p.m., Theres No Such Thing as
Political Capital, http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital20130207, accessed 7-10-13, MSG]
Consider, as another example, the storied political career of President Franklin Roosevelt. Because
the mood was ripe for dramatic change in the depths of the Great Depression, FDR was able to push an
astonishing array of New Deal programs through a largely compliant Congress, assuming what some
described as near-dictatorial powers. But in his second term, full of confidence because of a landslide
victory in 1936 that brought in unprecedented Democratic majorities in the House and Senate,
Roosevelt overreached with his infamous Court-packing proposal. All of a sudden, the political
capital that experts thought was limitless disappeared. FDRs plan to expand the Supreme Court by
putting in his judicial allies abruptly created an unanticipated wall of opposition from newly
reunited Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats. FDR thus inadvertently handed back to
Congress, especially to the Senate, the power and influence he had seized in his first term. Sure,
Roosevelt had loads of popularity and momentum in 1937. He seemed to have a bank vault full of
political capital. But, once again, a president simply chose to take on the wrong issue at the wrong
time; this time, instead of most of the political interests in the country aligning his way, they
opposed him. Roosevelt didnt fully recover until World War II, despite two more election victories.


Theory Neg

Generic Politics Good

Their interpretation of fiat is a voter for fairness and education:
1. Fairness: Politics DA is at the heart of why most plans havent been done we should be able to
talk about the real world political ramifications.
2. Education: talking about the political process allows us to become better decision makers. It also
allows us to have in-depth knowledge about the topic and models real-world Congressional
discussion of the plan.

AT Fiat Magic Wand

Our interpretation is that fiat means that plan PASSAGE starts immediately and follows normal
means which means being debated in Congress
Reasons to prefer
a
c
d
Real world education if were talking about policy, we should talk about how policies
exist in the real world. Just debating the plan in a vacuum is like living in a dream world.
Learning about political ramifications is key.
Neg ground We need the politics DA for neg ground. Theres no necessarily intrinsic
reason why social services are bad. This is a reason why we need access to the passage
process.
Their interpretation allows them to fiat solvency. Backlash and controversy is aff burden
to defend.

AT Bottom of Docket
1
Even if they win that the plan is at the bottom of the docket, the plan still adds something to the
docket, which triggers the link
Plan is not at the bottom of the docket. The docket is malleable and fiat means that plan passage
starts immediately. Best interp
a
Real world education we should learn about the political ramifications of policies in the real
world, not the plan in a vacuum
Neg ground the politics DA is key to neg ground. Check the fact that theres no inherent
reason social services are bad.
If they win that the plan is at the bottom of the docket,

1) They get no timeframe for their advantages and
2) At worst, theres a risk the plan would never pass.
Political process begins as soon as the plan is passed, which also triggers the expenditure of
political capital in Congressional meetings and votes, ensuring a link to the plan.
Docket is not a real thing Obama pushes what he thinks he can pass at the moment.
Neg ground: this interpretation can make any DA nonunique.
Makes the aff a moving target they can only defend the interpretation of fiat of the
1AC.
Education: Politics DA is at the core of why most plans havent been done its key to
test the real world political ramifications, which increases in-depth knowledge of the
topic.

AT Winding Way

Political process triggers the expenditure of political capital in Congressional meetings and votes.
1. Fairness: Politics DA is at the heart of why most plans havent been done we should be able to
talk about the real world political ramifications
This argument doesnt make sense fiat is able to overcome their argument
If delay happens and debate occurs, it means the plan is politically unpopular which spots us a link and it
proves that the plan wouldnt be able to solve in time
Even if you dont buy my argument, normal means would overcome the debate about the plan and the
implementation would be immediate and without delay

AT Normal Means Solves Link

1
The plan still creates fights. The very passage of the plan initiates the fights.
C/I the process of plan passage starts immediately. Reasons to prefer

a
Real world education if were talking about policy, we should talk about how
policies exist in the real world. Just debating the plan in a vacuum is like living in a
dream world. Learning about political ramifications is key.
Neg ground We need the politics DA for neg ground. Theres no necessarily
intrinsic reason why social services are bad. This is a reason why we need access to
the passage process.

AT Fiat Solves Link

Fiat doesnt solve the link our evidence is specific to backlash to the plan not Obamas involvement
This is a bad interpretation for debate -- Eliminates all politics DAs, which are the crux of neg ground
and education about the political process- not a reason to reject the team
The aff gets the minimum amount of fiat necessary. They can fiat the plan is passed, but they cant fiat the
political process of the plan.

1. Real-world Education: talking about the political process allows us to become better decision
makers. It also allows us to have in-depth knowledge about the topic and models real-world
Congressional discussion of the plan.
2. Fairness: Politics DAs are at the core of neg ground. Dont let them spike out of real world
process implications with an arbitrary definition of fiat that provides no educational benefit we
could never win a link to a DA with this interp of fiat.

AT No Backlash
Link arguments prove there is backlash and political reactions to the plan.

2. Fairness: the same interpretation could be extended to no link out of all DAs steals core neg
ground.

AT Compartmentalization
Issues dont get compartmentalized - empirics prove - if Obama loses on one issue, he loses even harder
on another as is seen with healthcare
This is a bad standard for debate as they could potentially eliminate every politics DA by saying that
certain issues dont relate to other issues in Congress politics DAs are core to the topic education and
are important generics to check back against an ocean of affirmatives

AT Intrinsicness
Obama has to spend political capital to pass the plan that is the 1NC ____________ link evidence.
Political capital expenditure proves the DA is intrinsic.
Intrinsicness arguments are bad for debate:

1. Infinitely Regressive: their interpretation means all DAs can hypothetically be solved by an
external policy option or intervening actor.
2. Neg Ground: analyzing political consequences is key to fully testing the plan. Their interpretation
excludes all politics DAs, which are at the core of neg ground.
3. Education: Politics DA is key to test the real world political ramifications, which increases indepth knowledge of the topic.
4. Voter for fairness and education.
5.

AT Vote Neg Triggers Link

1
Counter-interpretation voting neg means that the process of plan passage is never initiated. The
judge decides not to vote for fiating plan passage.
Reasons to prefer
a
Neg ground We need the politics DA for neg ground. Theres no necessarily intrinsic reason
why social services are bad. This is a reason why we need access to the passage process.
Brightline if voting neg still means that the plan is debated, theres no reason why the plan
couldnt essentially pass. The aff advocates for the plan and must defend the ramifications of
that plan and the neg proves that the plan (including the ramifications of the plan) is a bad
idea.

3
This round isnt a proxy congressional debate. The format does not model Congress.
Their interpretation of debate is bad:
Infinitely regressive: All DAs would hypothetically be triggered or inevitable just by the
neg just introducing them in the round takes out the majority of core neg ground.
b
c
d
e
Education: the plan cant be fully tested without DAs, so policymaking knowledge is lost.
Voter for fairness and education.

AT Vote No
Debate should include any consequence of passing the plan voting neg means process of plan
passage is never initiated
A. Vote no sticks us with defending a world other than the status quo kills ground by changing
every UQ question and eliminating perception links
B. Even if they win it just means that the plan is introduced it would sit in committee without
going anywhere, which means it never becomes a major fight


****Aff Answers

Uniqueness Answers

Congressional Backlash Now

Congress backlashing on ocean policy now
Russell, Fox News, 7-9-14
[George, Fox News, Fishing in murky waters, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/09/fishing-inmurky-waters-administrations-secretive-oceans-policies-come-under/, accessed 7-10-14, AFB]
That kind of tactical elusiveness is something that congressional Republicans have long found
frustrating, as they tried to block funding for the overall ocean policy, charging that the initiative
has never received legislative approval, is not subject to congressional oversight, and that its costs,
scope and sources of funding have never been revealed.
All of this is a terrible, terrible abuse of power, charges Doc Hastings, the chairman of the House
Committee on Natural Resources. The president is ruling by executive order, by fiat. Policy on
oceans should come through Congress. This is really an example of the administration simply not
giving information on what it is doing.

Controversies Now
Controversies thump Obamas political capital until November
Cohen, CNN, 7/4/14
[Tom, 7/4/2014, CNN NewSource, Obama dilemma: More jobs, less war, low polls,
http://www.wbaltv.com/politics/obama-dilemma-more-jobs-less-war-low-polls/26786320#!bbEN39,
accessed 7/9/14 CK]
The VA crisis follows other problems in the Obama administration such as the dysfunctional
website for health care reform, IRS political targeting of groups seeking tax-exempt status and
questions from congressional Republicans over the handling of the 2012 terrorist attack that killed
four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
As expected, Republicans have mounted a series of investigations, some necessary and others
intended to wring as much political capital out of the controversies as possible heading up to the
November elections and beyond.
They also adopted obstructionist tactics after getting overrun by Democratic majorities in Obama's first
term on transformative, key issues such as health care and Wall Street reforms.
After the Republicans gained control of the U.S. House in 2010, the result was a gridlocked Congress and
a President who appears to have thrown up his hands in disgust, making promises to act on his own as
much as he can.
"We can make even more progress if Congress is willing to work with my administration and to set
politics aside, at least occasionally," Obama said of Thursday's job report.
House Speaker John Boehner replied that "there's no shortage of common ground where he can
push his party's leaders in the Senate to work with us," he said in a swipe at Senate Democrats.
"Until he provides that leadership, he is simply part of the problem."
Obama focused on lawsuit, economy, highway trust fund, veterans, human

trafficking and terror
Hulse, New York Times chief Washington correspondent, 7/1/14
[Carl, 7/1/14, The New York Times, Deadlock in Congress Appears to Worsen as Midterms Loom,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/us/politics/deadlock-in-congress-appears-to-worsen-as-midtermsloom.html?_r=0, accessed 7/13/14, GNL]
WASHINGTON With immigration legislation dead for the year, Congress has a very short mustdo list as relations between the two parties, already miserable, seem to be getting worse in the
buildup to the midterm elections.

The effort to revive the appropriations process is teetering. House Republicans are preparing a lawsuit
challenging the power of the president, who denounces that move as a stunt. A special Republicancreated House panel on the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, will hold hearings this fall. The positions of
both parties are hardening.
As a result, minimal expectations for achievement in the final months of the 113th Congress and
at the midpoint of President Obamas second term are sinking lower, if that is possible.
Failure to act in a few crucial cases could imperil the fragile economic recovery. If Congress cannot
reach agreement on spending bills or stopgap funding by Oct. 1, another government shutdown
could result. And if Congress and the White House do not quickly find money for the depleted
Highway Trust Fund, states could be forced to suspend job-providing road and bridge projects at
the height of the construction season in August.
Top Democratic and Republican officials expect that Congress will avert both potential crises, though not
without the usual partisan brinkmanship. Republicans do not want to be seen as causing another
unpopular government shutdown a month before an election they believe is trending their way, and
neither party wants to see workers idled from good-paying jobs on community construction projects.
While the House and Senate may find a way to keep road construction going and federal agencies open,
what they do beyond that is an open question. Legislation on veterans health care, human trafficking
and terrorism insurance are on a scaled-back set of achievable priorities, along with an
administration request for more border funding.
But the collapse of immigration legislation has left a very big hole.
With any thought of a grand fiscal bargain in the distant past, the possibility of compromise on a
sweeping immigration policy was the last, best hope for a big accomplishment this year a
potentially legacy-burnishing success for both Mr. Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner.
A visibly frustrated president on Monday disclosed that Mr. Boehner, who was at the White House last
week to recognize professional golfers, had said definitively that he would not put any immigration
legislation on the floor. That disappointed advocates who had held out hope that House Republicans
might be willing to act after the threat of primary challenges had diminished.
The immigration stalemate set off an unusually harsh exchange of words, with Senator Harry Reid of
Nevada, the majority leader, saying Mr. Boehners failure of leadership is enormous. Mr. Boehner, for
his part, said the president was guilty of giving false hope to children and their families that if they enter
the country illegally, they will be allowed to stay.
Mr. Obama, in some of his sharpest comments about congressional Republicans, said they could head off
the type of executive action they abhor by cooperating on an immigration approach with broad support.
I take executive action only when we have a serious problem, a serious issue, and Congress chooses to
do nothing, he said. And in this situation, the failure of House Republicans to pass a darn bill is bad for
our security, its bad for our economy and its bad for our future.
Midterm elections and deep partisanship have not always been obstacles to legislative progress,
with members of Congress mindful of the need to score a few legislative victories so they can have
something to trumpet to voters back home.

For example, as Republicans tried in 2006 to maintain their majorities unsuccessfully, as it turned out
they produced a last-minute string of security-related bills on border fencing and port safeguards after
enacting a highway bill and an energy measure. However, a major push on immigration legislation came
up short that year as well.
Given the dearth of legislation, the best chance for lawmakers to influence policy was probably through
the 12 appropriations bills Congress struggled to pass in recent years. The effort was getting a strong push
this year, with the House making steady progress. But the drive was derailed in the Senate by a fight over
amendments and the threshold for approving them.
Though Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland and chairwoman of the Appropriations
Committee, wants to move forward, it appears unlikely that Mr. Reid will accept a demand by Senate
Republicans for a host of amendment votes. This puts the spending bills in limbo and Congress on track
to once again approve a stopgap funding bill, at least until after the elections.
As for the Highway Trust Fund, top officials say Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has been working on a series of tax changes to provide
money into next year, and Senate Democratic leaders have shown some interest.
Despite the inertia, lawmakers have proved that they can get some things done when it serves them. The
National Journal reported on Monday that Republican and Democratic members of the House Ethics
Committee quietly came together to agree that lawmakers do not have to report free trips they take on
their personal financial disclosure forms.

Obama Approval Low

Obama approval rating lower than ever before
Topaz, Politico reporter, 7/2/14
[Jonathan, 7/2/14, Politico, Poll: Obama worst president since WWII,
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/poll-obama-worst-president-since-wwii-108507.html, accessed
7/6/14, GNL]
A plurality of voters think Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II, a new poll
says.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, 33 percent of voters think the
current president is the worst since 1945.
Obamas predecessor, former President George W. Bush, came in at second-worst with 28 percent, and
Richard Nixon was in third place with 13 percent of the vote. After Jimmy Carter, who 8 percent of voters
said was the worst president in the time period, no other president received more than 3 percent.
Thirty-five percent of voters said Ronald Reagan was the best president since World War II,
receiving nearly twice as many votes as any other former president. Bill Clinton came in second
place at 18 percent, while John F. Kennedy came in third with 15 percent of the vote and Obama
came in fourth with 8 percent saying he was the best.
All other remaining presidents received 5 percent or less. Five percent of voters said Dwight D.
Eisenhower was the best president since 1945, while 4 percent said Harry Truman. Lyndon Johnson
and George H.W. Bush each received 3 percent. George W. Bush came in at 1 percent.
Forty-five percent of voters said the U.S. would be better off with Mitt Romney serving in the White
House, compared to 38 percent who said the country would be in worse shape.
The survey comes as Obama in recent weeks has found his popularity at the lowest levels of his
presidency.
The Quinnipiac poll reported more bad news about the presidents approval and competency ratings.
Forty percent of voters approve of the job Obama is doing, compared with 53 percent who
disapprove. Fifty-four percent of voters say the Obama administration is not competent at running
the government.
The survey was conducted June 24-30 with 1,446 registered voters on land lines and cellphones. The
margin for error is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Link Answers

Wind Link Non-Unique

The link is non-unique-DOE is funding offshore wind now
Cama, The Hill, 5/7/14
[Timothy, 5/7/2014, The Hill, DOE gives offshore wind projects up to $141 million,
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/205493-doe-gives-offshore-wind-projects-up-to-141million, accessed 7/9/2014, KS]
The Department of Energy (DOE) Wednesday said it will give up to $47 million each to three
offshore wind power projects over the next four years to pioneer innovative technology.
The planned projects are off the costs of New Jersey, Oregon and Virginia. DOE said the money will
help speed the deployment of efficient wind power technologies as part of the governments effort to
expand the use of wind power.
Offshore wind offers a large, untapped energy resource for the United States that can create
thousands of manufacturing, construction and supply chain jobs across the country and drive
billions of dollars in local economic investment, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a statement.
The Energy Department is working with public and private partners to harness this untapped
resource in a sustainable and economic manner.
The Link is non-unique-DOE is funding 200 million in offshore wind now

Franzen, Talking Points Memo, 12
[Carl, 12/13/12, Talking Points Memo, Energy Department Announces $28M In Funding For 7 Offshore
Wind Projects, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/idealab/energy-department-announces-28m-in-fundingfor-7-offshore-wind-projects, accessed 7/9/2014, KS]
The Obama Administration on Wednesday gave a huge boost to the development of offshore wind
energy projects in the U.S., of which there are exactly none, currently. But that's about to change quite
soon, with the Energy Department announcing awards for seven offshore wind farms around the
country, each project receiving $4 million for a collective $28 million.
The money is meant for seven different "technology demonstration partnerships" that combine
industry funding supplemented by the Energy Department and function within their local
jurisdictions to create new offshore wind farms due to be operational, at least in part, by 2017 at the
latest. The projects are each eligible to receive $47 million total over the next four years, if they can
demonstrate success with their developments.
Most of the projects are located around the coasts, but one, the "Icebreaker," is set to take spin in Lake
Erie.

The goal of the overall effort is for the U.S. government to spur the development of not just a whole new
industry and source of renewable power, but to "achieve large cost reductions over existing offshore wind
technologies," as the Energy Department's Research and Development website explained in a release.
As such, the awards are just part of over $200 million the Energy Department has awarded toward
developing offshore wind energy in the U.S. through other research projects over the past two
years.

No Link Normal Means = Name the Plan

Congress spins the names of plans to make them sound better and get good media
attention
Bravin, The Wall Street Journal Supreme Court correspondent, 11
[Jess, 1-12-11, The Wall Street Journal, Congress Finds, in Passing Bills, That Names Can Never Hurt
You, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703820904576057900030169850,
accessed 7-12-14, AKS]
WASHINGTONWe may never know how Thomas Jefferson coined the phrase "pursuit of
happiness." The HAPPY Act's origin is more clear.
"The staff was hounding me for a name," says Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, who had a bill to make pet-care
expenses tax-deductible. Then a 1972 Rolling Stones hit, "Happy," popped up on his iPod, he says, and
soon the Humanity and Pets Partnering through the Years Act was born.
Research suggests that pet owners are "happier and healthier" than those without companion animals, Mr.
McCotter explains.
Mr. McCotter, a Michigan Republican, isn't the only acronym addict on Capitol Hill. In recent years,
Congress has been flooded with a Scrabble board of legislative titles including the DISCLOSE Act,
the HIRE Act and the ASPIRE Act, all of which take too much space to spell out here. In December,
President Barack Obama signed the Help HAITI (Haitian Adoptees Immediately to Integrate) Act,
but he was helpless as his Democrats saw their DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for
Alien Minors) Act go down the drain.
Donald Ritchie, the Senate historian, says lawmakers rely on rhetorical tricks to give their legislation an
edge.
"It's a matter of scrambling for attention, given the fact that there are thousands of bills proposed
and only 3% will pass," he says.
Congressman rally public support with catchy names for their bills-allowing easier
passage
Long, The Hill Business, 5
[Chrissie, 4-21-5, The Hill, Lawmakers turn to catchy names for bills,
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/11040-lawmakers-turn-to-catchy-names-for-bills, accessed 7-13-14,
AKS]
As lawmakers look for name recognition to garner support for their legislation, catchy bill
acronyms such as the USA PATRIOT Act, the SNIPER Act or the BE REAL Act are becoming

increasingly popular. With the relatively low chances of passing a bill into law, some legislators are
doing anything they can to get their bills noticed.
With everything that is going on at Capitol Hill, congressmen have recognized that, to get their bills
passed, they need media interest and public support, said Diana Owen, professor of political
communication at Georgetown University. Devising a creative title is a good strategy, if you want to
get that media attention.
While some offices slap together words to fit an acronym in just a few hours, others involve input from
dozens of people and take days.
The naming of bills can take hundreds of minds, said Don DeArmon, legislative director for Rep.
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.). For the Sober Truth of Preventing Underage Drinking (or STOP
Underage Drinking) Act of 2004, seven Hill offices were included in formulating the name of the bill.
Clearly we wanted to come up with an acronym, DeArmon said. A catchy title helps the advocacy
groups to quickly identify your bill and make it priority.
Rodell Mollineau, communications director in Sen. Mark Pryors (D-Ark.) office, said that attentiongrabbing titles also help constituents identify and voice opinions on legislation. Rather than refer to
a boring bill number, the acronym or short title rolls easily off a persons tongue.
The title is the most important part of the legislation Congress uses it to make it
difficult to vote no-plan avoids the link
Lederman, Medill Reports, 10
[Josh, 6-8-10, Medill Reports, A bills name is part of the game,
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=166509, accessed 7-13-14, AKS]
Political language, wrote George Orwell in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, is
designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.
If thats so, then the job of rooting out the truth isnt made any easier when political language
strays into hundreds or thousands of pages, as major pieces of legislation do. But one line has the
ability to shape a bills reception and chance of passage: the title.
The title of the legislation is more important than what the legislation actually says, said Alan
Rubin, director of federal government relations for Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney, a national law firm.
Its really unfortunate, but thats how it works.
The complexities of legislative process have never much been fancied by the American public, and
in an era of Twitter and reality television, its not surprising that most voters arent reading bills in
full or closely watching the sausage-making. What they can track are short, evocative
representations of complicated issues.
Its marketing, its persuasion, said Illinois Senate President John Cullerton. Its putting an argument
into the title to help persuade people, to make it difficult to vote no.


No Link Secretary of State Kerry Would Push the Plan

Kerry rallying for international support for ocean policies
Rosenberg, Union of Concerned Scientists science and democracy director, 14
[Andrew, 6-16-14, Union of Concerned Scientists, Science, Democracy, and International Ocean Policy:
Thank You, Secretary Kerry, http://blog.ucsusa.org/science-democracy-and-international-ocean-policythank-you-secretary-kerry-558, accessed 7-12-14, AKS]
When Secretary of State John Kerry was appointed to be our top diplomat, he told his staff at State
that he wanted to take stronger international action to conserve and manage the oceans. This week,
the Secretary is holding an international conference in Washington as a signature event fulfilling
that commitment. But it is a tumultuous world, and each day we hear that Secretary Kerry is here, there
and everywhere; crisis in the Middle East, Ukraine, China, Africa and more. Can he really afford to spend
two days talking about ocean conservation?
But then if we just run from crisis to crisis, when do we pay attention to ominous problems such as
climate change, biodiversity loss or depletion of ocean resources? These are challenges that affect global
society as much as the seemingly endless conflicts the Secretary must work to solve through diplomacy
rather than military action.
The State Department conference was designed around a focus on sustaining fisheries, reducing
marine pollution, and addressing the ocean effects of climate change such as ocean acidification.
But really we will be talking about the health of the oceans broadly, because human society is
impacting the oceans not only through pollution, exploitation and climate change, but through
habitat loss, coastal development and many other impacts.
That doesnt mean that we can or should bring development to a standstill, but it does mean we need to
manage our impacts. After all, we dont manage the oceans. We can only manage human societys
impact on the oceans. Bringing together political leaders from around the globe, as perhaps only the
U.S. Secretary of State can do, is an opportunity to truly focus on what needs to be done for the
future, not just bemoan the past.
I am honored to serve on the steering committee for the conference as well as being a panelist. My
role will be to talk about the scientific work of assessment of the status and trends of many
different aspects of the ocean. There are broad international and national assessments of ocean
conditions and human impacts on the ocean developed over the last several years, including a new
Ocean Health Index and a soon to be completed World Ocean Assessment under the auspices of the UN.
And of course the IPCC report and the U.S. National Climate Assessment, which includes a chapter on
the oceans for the first time, address the overarching challenges of climate change.
From personal experience with these efforts I can tell you that they are huge efforts involving many
scientists, and they bring together information sources across the globe. But their real impact
should be to focus attention on what needs to done to respond to very real challenges. These
scientific syntheses enable citizens and policy makers alike to see the direction we are going and

take action to address the problems we face. They are designed to be understandable beyond a
scientific audience, to present the state of our knowledge as a basis for action.
So thank you, Mr. Secretary, for devoting your time and the weight of your office to ocean issues
and for making the clear connections between science and policy action that are sorely needed in so
many areas.

No Link Expertise Spin Wins

Engagement with in-field experts over policymaking reduces skepticism among
legislators and magnifies the power of political capital
Villalabos et al., University of Texas at El Paso Political Science Professor, 12
[Jos D., Justin S. Vaughn, Boise State University Assistant Professor of Political Science, Julia R. Arazi,
Marquette University Assistant Professor of Political Science, September 2012, Politics or Policy? How
Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress, Presidential Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3, Center
for the Study of the Presidency, p. 556-7, Proquest, accessed 7-8-13, UR]
Finally, the fourth category of presidential policy proposal messages concerns not necessarily the way
the president sells an initiative, but rather the substantive quality of the legislative proposal being put
forward. Presidents can earn greater policy credibility when they seek an enhanced level of
involvement by policy experts, particularly those involved in the administration and implementation
of existing law. By putting forward policy initiatives developed using the input of experts, such as
key agency officials, presidents are also communicating to members of Congress about both the
quality of the proposal and the degree to which the president has delegated the policy-crafting task
not to his political subordinates, but rather to bureaucratic experts who are more neutral and policy
competent.
In accordance with the recent work by Villalobos (2008, forthcoming), we posit that agency input
provides presidential policy development with expertise and objectivity, process transparency,
cooperative consultation with Congress, and agency support, which should markedly increase presidential
policy-making success in Congress. The involvement of agency actors in the policy development phase
provides presidents with a degree of bureaucratic expertise9 that is more objective than the advice of the
presidents inner circle and that legislatorsparticularly partisan opponents of the presidentare
therefore relatively less likely to oppose (Villalobos 2008, forthcoming).10 Agency actors are generally
more objective than White House staffers because they are less likely to view policy options primarily
through an ideological lens and instead base much of their preferences on bureaucratic expertise
accumulated from years of policy learning and institutional memory, which provides them with an
authoritative knowledge of government procedures and folkways (Weko 1995; Wolf 1999).
Agency involvement at the policy development stage also allows members of Congress to more
openly observe and take part in the policy-making process, which helps legitimize policy initiatives
in the eyes of legislators prior to their proposal. According to Rudalevige (2002, 150), Members of
Congress know less about an item being crafted in the White House than they do about a departmental
production, and have less reason to believe that the information they do receive from EOP [Executive
Office of the President] sources is reliable. Given that congressional committees often hold hearings
to ascertain whether a policy initiative represents a valid policy solution, presidential policy
proposals with agency support are therefore less likely to generate skepticism among legislators.
Consequently, by attaining the input of agency actors, the president thus signals to members of Congress
that a given policy proposal has endured the scrutiny as well as earned the support of the very people
responsible for its eventual implementation.


Internal Link Answers

Winners Win

Winners Win & No Internal Link

Political capital arguments are flawed other variables winners win more likely
Hirsh, National Journal chief correspondent, 13
[Michael, 2-9-13, National Journal, "Theres No Such Thing as Political Capital,"
www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207, accessed 7-913]
On Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, President Obama will do what every president does this
time of year. For about 60 minutes, he will lay out a sprawling and ambitious wish list highlighted by gun
control and immigration reform, climate change and debt reduction. In response, the pundits will do
what they always do this time of year: They will talk about how unrealistic most of the proposals are,
discussions often informed by sagacious reckonings of how much political capital Obama possesses
to push his program through.
Most of this talk will have no bearing on what actually happens over the next four years.
Consider this: Three months ago, just before the November election, if someone had talked seriously
about Obama having enough political capital to oversee passage of both immigration reform and
gun-control legislation at the beginning of his second termeven after winning the election by 4
percentage points and 5 million votes (the actual final tally)this person would have been called crazy
and stripped of his pundits license. (It doesnt exist, but it ought to.) In his first term, in a starkly
polarized country, the president had been so frustrated by GOP resistance that he finally issued a limited
executive order last August permitting immigrants who entered the country illegally as children to work
without fear of deportation for at least two years. Obama didnt dare to even bring up gun control, a
Democratic third rail that has cost the party elections and that actually might have been even less
popular on the right than the presidents health care law. And yet, for reasons that have very little to do
with Obamas personal prestige or popularityvariously put in terms of a mandate or political
capitalchances are fair that both will now happen.
What changed? In the case of gun control, of course, it wasnt the election. It was the horror of the 20
first-graders who were slaughtered in Newtown, Conn., in mid-December. The sickening reality of little
girls and boys riddled with bullets from a high-capacity assault weapon seemed to precipitate a sudden
tipping point in the national conscience. One thing changed after another. Wayne LaPierre of the National
Rifle Association marginalized himself with poorly chosen comments soon after the massacre. The progun lobby, once a phalanx of opposition, began to fissure into reasonables and crazies. Former Rep.
Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head two years ago and is still struggling to speak and
walk, started a PAC with her husband to appeal to the moderate middle of gun owners. Then she gave
riveting and poignant testimony to the Senate, challenging lawmakers: Be bold.
As a result, momentum has appeared to build around some kind of a plan to curtail sales of the most
dangerous weapons and ammunition and the way people are permitted to buy them. Its impossible to say
now whether such a bill will pass and, if it does, whether it will make anything more than cosmetic

changes to gun laws. But one thing is clear: The political tectonics have shifted dramatically in very
little time. Whole new possibilities exist now that didnt a few weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the Republican members of the Senates so-called Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a
new spirit of compromise on immigration reform, a sharp change after an election year in which
the GOP standard-bearer declared he would make life so miserable for the 11 million illegal
immigrants in the U.S. that they would self-deport. But this turnaround has very little to do with
Obamas personal influencehis political mandate, as it were. It has almost entirely to do with just
two numbers: 71 and 27. Thats 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt Romney, the breakdown of
the Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential election. Obama drove home his advantage by giving a speech
on immigration reform on Jan. 29 at a Hispanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won
by a surprising 8 percentage points in November. But the movement on immigration has mainly come out
of the Republican Partys recent introspection, and the realization by its more thoughtful members, such
as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party
may be facing demographic death in a country where the 2010 census showed, for the first time, that
white births have fallen into the minority. Its got nothing to do with Obamas political capital or,
indeed, Obama at all.
The point is not that political capital is a meaningless term. Often it is a synonym for mandate or
momentum in the aftermath of a decisive electionand just about every politician ever elected has
tried to claim more of a mandate than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can say that because he was
elected and Romney wasnt, he has a better claim on the countrys mood and direction. Many pundits still
defend political capital as a useful metaphor at least. Its an unquantifiable but meaningful concept, says
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. You cant really look at a president and say hes
got 37 ounces of political capital. But the fact is, its a concept that matters, if you have popularity and
some momentum on your side.
The real problem is that the idea of political capitalor mandates, or momentumis so poorly
defined that presidents and pundits often get it wrong. Presidents usually over-estimate it, says
George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University. The best kind of political capital
some sense of an electoral mandate to do somethingis very rare. It almost never happens. In 1964,
maybe. And to some degree in 1980. For that reason, political capital is a concept that misleads far
more than it enlightens. It is distortionary. It conveys the idea that we know more than we really do
about the ever-elusive concept of political power, and it discounts the way unforeseen events can
suddenly change everything . Instead, it suggests, erroneously, that a political figure has a concrete
amount of political capital to invest, just as someone might have real investment capitalthat a
particular leader can bank his gains, and the size of his account determines what he can do at any
given moment in history.
Naturally, any president has practical and electoral limits. Does he have a majority in both
chambers of Congress and a cohesive coalition behind him? Obama has neither at present. And
unless a surge in the economyat the moment, still stuckor some other great victory gives him
more momentum, it is inevitable that the closer Obama gets to the 2014 election, the less he will be
able to get done. Going into the midterms, Republicans will increasingly avoid any concessions that
make him (and the Democrats) stronger.

But the abrupt emergence of the immigration and gun-control issues illustrates how suddenly shifts in
mood can occur and how political interests can align in new ways just as suddenly. Indeed, the pseudoconcept of political capital masks a larger truth about Washington that is kindergarten simple: You
just dont know what you can do until you try. Or as Ornstein himself once wrote years ago,
Winning wins. In theory, and in practice, depending on Obamas handling of any particular
issue, even in a polarized time, he could still deliver on a lot of his second-term goals, depending on
his skill and the breaks. Unforeseen catalysts can appear, like Newtown. Epiphanies can dawn, such as
when many Republican Party leaders suddenly woke up in panic to the huge disparity in the Hispanic
vote.
Some political scientists who study the elusive calculus of how to pass legislation and run successful
presidencies say that political capital is, at best, an empty concept, and that almost nothing in the
academic literature successfully quantifies or even defines it. It can refer to a very abstract thing,
like a presidents popularity, but theres no mechanism there. That makes it kind of useless, says
Richard Bensel, a government professor at Cornell University. Even Ornstein concedes that the
calculus is far more complex than the term suggests. Winning on one issue often changes the
calculation for the next issue; there is never any known amount of capital. The idea here is, if an issue
comes up where the conventional wisdom is that president is not going to get what he wants, and
[they]he gets it, then each time that happens, it changes the calculus of the other actors Ornstein
says. If they think hes going to win, they may change positions to get on the winning side. Its a
bandwagon effect.

Winners Win
Victories increase capital
Lee, Claremont McKenna College 5
(Andrew, Invest or Spend? Political Capital and Statements of Administration Policy in the First Term of
the George W. Bush Presidency, Georgia Political Science Association Conference Proceedings, http://as.clayton.edu/trachtenberg/2005%20Proceedings%20Lee.pdf, accessed 7-9-12 FFF)
To accrue political capital, the president may support a particular lawmakers legislation by issuing
an SAP urging support, thereby giving that legislator more pull in the Congress and at home. The
president may also receive capital from Congress by winning larger legislative majorities. For
example, the presidents successful efforts at increasing Republican representation in the Senate and
House would constitute an increase in political capital. The president may also receive political capital
from increased job favorability numbers, following through with purported policy agendas, and
defeating opposing party leaders (Lindberg 2004). Because political capital diminishes, a president
can invest in policy and legislative victories to maintain or increase it. For example, President George
W. Bush invests his political capital in tax cuts which he hopes will yield returns to the economy and his
favorability numbers. By investing political capital, the president assumes a return on investment.
Winners winlegislative wins inspire congressional bandwagoning and create

positive media spin
Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar, 93
[Norman J., 5/27/93, Clinton Can Still Emerge a Winner; Heres What to Do, Roll Call, Lexis,
AC]
2. Winning comes to those who look like winners. This only sounds redundant or cliche-ish. If power is
the ability to make people do something they otherwise would not do, real power is having people
do things they otherwise wouldn't do without anybody making them - when they act in anticipation
of what they think somebody would want them to do. If a president develops a reputation as a
winner, somebody who will pull out victories in Congress even when he is behind, somebody who
can say, "Do this!" and have it done, then Members of Congress will behave accordingly. They will
want to cut their deals with the president early, getting on the winning team when it looks the best
and means the most. They will avoid cutting deals with the opposition. Stories that show weakness,
indecisiveness, or incompetence in the White House - and there are always lots of them - will go
unreported or will be played down because they will be seen as the exception that proves the rule of
strength and competence.

Winners win and compromises failempirically proven

Gergen, former advisor to four presidents, 13
[David, advisor to Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton and Harvard Public Service Professor, 1/19/13,
CNN, Obama 2.0: Smarter, tougher -- but wiser?, http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/18/opinion/gergen-
obama-two/index.html, accessed 7/13/14, AC]
(CNN) -- On the eve of his second inaugural, President Obama appears smarter, tougher and bolder
than ever before. But whether he is also wiser remains a key question for his new term.
It is clear that he is consciously changing his leadership style heading into the next four years. Weeks
before the November elections, his top advisers were signaling that he intended to be a different kind
of president in his second term.
"Just watch," they said to me, in effect, "he will win re-election decisively and then he will throw down
the gauntlet to the Republicans, insisting they raise taxes on the wealthy. Right on the edge of the
fiscal cliff, he thinks Republicans will cave."
What's your Plan B, I asked. "We don't need a Plan B," they answered. "After the president hangs
tough -- no more Mr. Nice Guy -- the other side will buckle." Sure enough, Republicans caved on
taxes. Encouraged, Obama has since made clear he won't compromise with Republicans on the debt
ceiling, either.
Obama 2.0 stepped up this past week on yet another issue: gun control. No president in two decades
has been as forceful or sweeping in challenging the nation's gun culture. Once again, he portrayed the
right as the enemy of progress and showed no interest in negotiating a package up front.
In his coming State of the Union address, and perhaps in his inaugural, the president will begin a hard
push for a comprehensive reform of our tattered immigration system. Leading GOP leaders on the
issue -- Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, for example -- would prefer a piecemeal approach that is bipartisan.
Obama wants to go for broke in a single package, and on a central issue -- providing a clear path to
citizenship for undocumented residents -- he is uncompromising.
After losing out on getting Susan Rice as his next secretary of state, Obama has also shown a
tougher side on personnel appointments. Rice went down after Democratic as well as Republican
senators indicated a preference for Sen. John Kerry. But when Republicans also tried to kill the
nomination of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense, Obama was unyielding -- an "in-your-face
appointment," Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, called it, echoing sentiments held by some of
his colleagues.
Republicans would have preferred someone other than Jack Lew at Treasury, but Obama brushed
them off. Hagel and Lew -- both substantial men -- will be confirmed, absent an unexpected
bombshell, and Obama will rack up two more victories over Republicans.
His new style is paying off politically. But in the long run, will it also pay off in better governance?
Strikingly, Obama has also been deft in the ways he has drawn upon Vice President Joe Biden. During
much of the campaign, Biden appeared to be kept under wraps. But in the transition, he has been

invaluable to Obama in negotiating a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the fiscal
cliff and in pulling together the gun package. Biden was also at his most eloquent at the ceremony
announcing the gun measures.
All of this has added up for Obama to one of the most effective transitions in modern times. And it
is paying rich dividends: A CNN poll this past week pegged his approval rating at 55%, far above the
doldrums he was in for much of the past two years. Many of his long-time supporters are rallying
behind him. As the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to score back-to-back election victories
with more than 50% of the vote, Obama is in the strongest position since early in his first year.
Smarter, tougher, bolder -- his new style is paying off politically. But in the long run, will it also pay
off in better governance? Perhaps -- and for the country's sake, let's hope so. Yet, there are ample reasons
to wonder, and worry.
Winners winmedia spin drives support and politicians dont want to cross a
winner
[Norman J., 9/10/1, Roll Call, High Stakes and an Overloaded Agenda,
http://www.aei.org/article/economics/fiscal-policy/high-stakes-and-an-overloaded-agenda/, accessed
7/13/14, AC]
Those victories came at a crucial time, psychologically, for the White House. Imagine if the
Democrats preferred patients rights legislation had passed by a wide margin in the House (as it
has in the past) and if the President had been rebuffed on drilling in ANWR. He would have spent
the month of August as the target of news stories declaring him weak and on the defensive, and
arrived back in Washington in September with no momentum and limited leverage in the legislative
battles of the fall. Instead, by showing that he can win even when hes expected to lose, and even on
high-stakes issues, Bush left lawmakers with reason to pause before writing him off when key votes
loom.
Presidential leadership bolsters agenda

[Norman J., 5/27/93, Clinton Can Still Emerge a Winner; Heres What to Do, Roll Call, Lexis,
AC]
A president's power is defined by his relations with Congress. A president must exercise power in
many arenas, persuading many audiences at home and abroad. But the key test for a president's
clout or success is how he is judged in dealing with Congress: Does he master them, or do they
master him? The successful president, I suggested in these pages in March, comes across like animal
tamer Gunther Gebel-Williams: He gets into the ring with the Congressional lions and tigers, cracks

the whip, and, although they growl and roar, they still get up on their tiny little stools and perform.
But if a president looks like Gulliver, a pitiful, helpless giant dominated by Congressional Lilliputians,
then watch out.
Winning in this regard does not mean forcing sweeping proposals, in toto, down the throats of
lawmakers. It means compromising, cutting back, and ceding ground to build majorities, but doing
so in ways that make it clear that you are in control.
Winners winmedia and congressional support--empirics prove

Green, Hofstra University PolySci Professor, 10
[David Michael, 7/13/14, Common Dreams, The Do-Nothing 44th President,
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/12-1, accessed 7/13/14, AC]
Moreover, there is a continuously evolving and reciprocal relationship between presidential
boldness and achievement. In the same way that nothing breeds success like success, nothing sets
the president up for achieving his or her next goal better than succeeding dramatically on the last
go around.
This is absolutely a matter of perception, and you can see it best in the way that Congress and
especially the Washington press corps fawn over bold and intimidating presidents like Reagan and
George W. Bush. The political teams surrounding these presidents understood the psychology of
power all too well. They knew that by simultaneously creating a steamroller effect and feigning a
clubby atmosphere for Congress and the press, they could leave such hapless hangers-on with only
one remaining way to pretend to preserve their dignities. By jumping on board the freight train,
they could be given the illusion of being next to power, of being part of the winning team. And so,
with virtually the sole exception of the now retired Helen Thomas, this is precisely what they did.
Winners win plan is a legislative victory

Mead, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy, 11
[Walter Russell, 6-20-11, Business Insider, Here's How Obama Can Save His Presidency,
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-obama-can-save-his-presidency-2011-6, accessed 7-3-11]
Americans are realistic enough to understand that the breakdown of the blue social model is a messy
process and that perhaps no president can deliver a pain free transition to the next stage. But what they
arent hearing from President Obama is a compelling description of what has gone wrong, how it can be
fixed, and how the policies he proposes will take us to the next level. What they hear from this
administration are defensive responses: Hooveresque calls for patience mingled with strange-sounding
attacks on ATMs and sharp, opportunistic jabs at former President Bush. The White House has responded
to strategic challenges at home and abroad with tactical maneuvers. Voters sense that we live in historic
times that demand leadership of a different kind. What does President Obama think about the fiscal
squeeze forcing trade-offs between state employee benefits and services to the poor? How much trouble is
the American middle class in and what changes are needed to save it? The President of the United

States has to own this conversation. His vision, his initiatives must dominate the political scene. His
opponents may fight him and defeat his proposals in Congress that is not the worst thing that can
happen. Harry Truman did very well running against a do-nothing Congress in 1948. At a time of
historic anxiety and tension like the present, the President of the United States cannot be an
administrator, a fence-sitter, a finger-pointer. He must first and foremost stand for something
and he must be able to make that something resonate with the voters. The Presidents job is to lead.
The longer the President fails to dominate the discussion about where this country is going the more
his authority will erode. In the end, a failure to define the problem and outline a convincing solution will
hurt more than what now appears his likely failure to regenerate healthy economic growth by the next
election. He may have only one chance to get this right. A failed attempt to define the problem and
control the discussion would further fuzz the Presidents image and reinforce the sense among
many voters that the man is not up to the hour. The Obama Presidency can still be saved, but only if
the President becomes the kind of inspiring and effective leader these tough and uncertain times
demand.
Winners win the bully pulpit outweighs

Kuttner, American Prospect co-founder, 11
(Robert, co-founder and current co-editor of The American Prospect, co-founder and director of
the Economic Policy Institute, and Demos research and policy center Distinguished Senior Fellow;
5/10/11, The American Prospect, Barack Obamas Theory of Power, http://prospect.org/cs/articles?
article=barack_obamas_theory_of_power, Accessed 7/9/13)
Obamas critics contend that his prolonged fantasy of bipartisanship, his failure to lay the blame for the
depressed economy squarely on the Republicans, and his reluctance to use his bully pulpit to tell a
coherent story, particularly about jobs, needlessly weakened the Democrats and led to avoidable losses in
the 2010 midterm. More fundamentally, under Obama government has lost credibility as a necessary force
for economic recovery and fairness, undermining the Democrats core appeal to voters. At the very
least, Obama failed to drive the agenda or exploit the full possibilities of presidential leadership in a
crisis. In the formulation of the political historian James MacGregor Burns, Obama ran and inspired
voters as a transformational figure but governed as a transactional one. Notwithstanding a vow to
profoundly change Washington, Obama took the Washington power constellation as a given. Despite an
economic emergency, he moved neither Congress nor public opinion very much and only seldom used his
oratorical gifts. He is so damned smart and confident that he thinks he just has to explain things to the
American people once, says former House Appropriations Chair David Obey. He doesnt appreciate
that you have to reinforce a message 50 times. Obamas reticence, his reluctance to lay blame, make
sharp partisan distinctions, or practice a politics of class, reflects the interplay of his personality and his
tacit theory of powerone that emphasizes building bridges to opponents, defying ideological categories,
shying away from the kind of mass mobilization that swept him into office, and practicing a kind of Zen
detachment. At moments in American history, that conception of the presidency has suited the times. This
doesnt seem to be one of those moments. Yet in the third year of his presidency, there are signs of a
learning curve. It may be that Obama is playing his own elegant brand of rope-a-dope, biding his
time, letting the Republicans lead with their chins, waiting for just the right moment to dramatize their

extremism and exploit their schismsthen demonstrating a toughness that has largely eluded him
until now and reshaping the political center as a more progressive one. The hope of a new, more
combative Obama was kindled by portions of his April 13 speech at George Washington University,
which showed an Obama that weve seldom seen during his presidency. The man America elected
president has re-emerged, exulted The New York Times lead editorial. Obama departed from his usual
reluctance to be partisan, explicitly criticizing the self-annihilating Republican designs so usefully spelled
out in Rep. Paul Ryans proposed 10-year budget. The president resorted to a formulation he seldom uses
the injustices of class: The top 1 percent saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of
a million dollars each. Thats who needs to pay less taxes? Obama said. They want to give people like
me a $200,000 tax cut thats paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs. Thats
not right. And its not going to happen as long as Im president. At last, Obama shifted the mindnumbing debate from the scale of the budget and its deficits to its content and political meaning. He did
what his progressive critics have long advocated, drawing a clear, bright, partisan line and pledging to
defend Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But the budgetary details of the speech showed an
Obama who was still the transactional leader of the Burns paradigm. Obama devoted most of the speech
to his own plans for cutting the deficit. Jobs and recovery were hardly mentioned. Most of the proposed
deficit reductions came from cuts to programs rather than from tax increases. And Obama was far too
generous with the word, we. As in: But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline
during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for
two wars and an expensive prescription-drug programbut we didnt pay for any of this new spending.
Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts. [Emphasis added.] As
Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, What do you mean, we? This fiscal deterioration, of course, was the
Republicans handiwork. Why not point that out? Obama seemed to come to his partisanship reluctantly,
almost apologetically. At one point in the speech, having just flayed the Republicans for their sheer
extremism, he added, Im eager to hear other ideas from all ends of the political spectrum. He further
mixed his own message by declaring, We will all need to make sacrifices. Indeed, the main ideological
themes of the speech had been undermined by Obamas earlier compromises. The left pole that Obama
defined in the budget debate had already been moved to the right by his yearlong emphasis on deficit
reduction; his prior concessions in the December 2010 tax deal, which failed to restore higher tax rates on
the rich; and the 2011 budget deal, which cut $38 billion in programs. If the bipartisan Gang of Six,
spawn of Obamas own Bowles-Simpson commission, does reach agreement, it will only add pressure to
alter Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the worsethus fatally blurring Obamas bright line.
Was Obamas speechthe most resolutely political, partisan, progressive, and effective in recent memory
a turning point or a one-off? Is Obama now revising his theory and practice of presidential power? As
the political scientist Richard Neustadt observed in his classic work, Presidential Power, a book that had
great influence on President John F. Kennedy, the essence of a presidents power is the power to
persuade. Because our divided constitutional system does not allow the president to lead by
commanding, presidents amass power by making strategic choices about when to use the latent
authority of the presidency to move public and elite opinion and then use that added prestige as
clout to move Congress. In one of Neustadts classic case studies, Harry Truman, a president widely
considered a lame duck, nonetheless persuaded the broad public and a Republican Congress in 19471948 that the Marshall Plan was a worthy idea. As Neustadt and Burns both observed, though an
American chief executive is weak by constitutional design, a president possesses several points of
leverage. He can play an effective outside game, motivating and shaping public sentiment, making clear
the differences between his values and those of his opposition, and using popular support to box in his
opponents and move them in his direction. He can complement the outside bully pulpit with a nimble

inside game, uniting his legislative party, bestowing or withholding benefits on opposition
legislators, forcing them to take awkward votes, and using the veto. He can also enlist the support of
interest groups to pressure Congress, and use media to validate his framing of choices. Done
well, all of this signals leadership that often moves the public agenda. The most effective presidents
have worked all these levers. Think of Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan, or Lyndon B. Johnson
during the era of the War on Poverty and the civil-rights crusade. But except in the endgame of the battle
for health care and his recent turnabout in defending Medicare, Obama has been relatively disengaged on
all of these fronts. He left the details of his signature legislation and attendant bargaining to his staff. Says
a senior Democrat who speaks frequently to Obama, He is just not someone who enjoys what most of
presidential politics entails. Reviewing Obamas relatively short career, a few core principles emerge in
which he deeply believes. These have remained constants. Building Bridges. Obama, famously, is
convinced both by his life journey and his prior experience in politics that he can persuade almost any
adversary to find areas of common ground. Much of Obamas self-confidence, wrote David Remnick in
his biography of Obama, The Bridge, resided in his belief that he could walk into a room, with any sort
of people, and forge a relationship and even persuade those people of the rightness of his position. From
the Harvard Law Review, to the Illinois Senate, to the Iowa precinct caucuses, Obamas political life
before his presidency only strengthened that conviction. Obama has a deep certitude that the voters,
especially political independents, are sick of partisan division and want a leader who will rise above it to
solve practical problems. In service of that goal, he has bent over backward to praise his opposition rather
than attack it, frequently offering concessions in advance. Mostly, he has pursued common ground by
giving ground. The experience of his first two years, when Republicans wanted nothing so much as to
destroy him, did not shake Obama from these strategic beliefs. He doesnt have a fighters instinct, but
he is in the middle of a hugely consequential fight, says a veteran Senate Democrat. They will keep
pushing him as long as he keeps backing up. His drawing of bright lines in the April 13 speech was very
much the exception. Defying Categories. This core political instinct interacts with, and is reinforced by,
Obamas personal reticence and determination not to be the angry black man. From his first entry into
electoral politics, he defined himself as a different sort of African American and a different sort of liberal.
Even though his voting record as a U.S. senator was one of the most progressive, as president he has
almost gone out of his way to distance himself from the liberal base. In an interview with The New York
Times Peter Baker on the eve of the 2010 elections, Obama expressed regrets for looking too much like
the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat. Courting Elites, Wary of Mass Mobilization. Obama and
his campaign staff brilliantly enlisted an army of volunteers who thought of themselves as a movement
built on the values of sweeping change and the tactics of community organizing. Obama repeatedly
vowed that he would use these engaged citizens to press Congress to enact health reform and other urgent
priorities. But once elected, Obamas political staff quickly downgraded Obama for America into
Organizing for America, a denatured arm of the Democratic National Committeeout of concern that an
independent movement might be more of a pressure group than an amen chorus. While he has maintained
a closeand politically damagingalliance with Wall Street (and lately, under Chief of Staff Bill Daleys
tutelage, has reached out to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce), Obama has been detached from the one
recent popular rising that could help him win lost ground in the crucial states of the Midwestthe
backlash against union busting and draconian budget cuts by Midwestern Republican governors and
legislators. Though the line attributed to FDR speaking to supportersNow, make me do itis
probably apocryphal, Roosevelt did make good use of popular groups to his left, as did Lyndon Johnson
in his complex alliance with Martin Luther King. Obama and his political staff are distinctly
uncomfortable with independent mobilizations making him do anything. At a time when progressive
movements lack the energy of the 1930s or 1960s, the president has not chosen to help animate them. Zen

Leadership. The adjectives widely used to describe Obama are words like diffident, detached, aloof,
professorial. Obama practices restraint to a fault. As a policy expert and intellectual, he is hands-on when
it comes to White House deliberation but mostly hands-off with Congress. As Burns
demonstrated, power is enhanced in the course of its exercise. But Obama, despite his eloquence and
capacity to motivate, seems to believe that power should be conserved and presidential leadership
reserved for emergencies. He waited long and disabling months before
becoming personally engaged in the health-reform battle. This left the details obscure, voters
anxious, and Democrats at the August 2009 town meetings playing the role of pinata. By the time
the bill finally passed, the victory was politically Pyrrhic. An exasperated David Obey told me,
Obama sat and let Jubilation T. Cornpone tie up Max Baucus for all those months. Hell, Chuck Grassley
made it clear to me that hed never vote for the thing. Obama and his team never embraced such
strategies as forcing Republicans (and conservative Democrats) to take awkward votes or using the veto
to define clear and principled differences. David Axelrod told me that the White House considered it futile
and self-defeating to bring up measures in the Senate that couldnt win. This stance, the opposite of Harry
Trumans, has infuriated Obamas allies in the House. During the last session, important progressive
legislation on jobs and energy independence passed the House but was never even brought to a vote in the
Senate. In one emblematic episode in December 2009, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pulled out all the
stops to get the House to narrowly pass a $154 billion public-investment, jobs, and unemploymentextension bill. The White House, however, rebuffed Pelosis entreaties to urge Majority Leader Harry
Reid to bring the measure to a vote in the Senate. At the time, Obamas aides were convinced that job
growth was around the corner, had already moved on to deficit reduction as the theme of the 2010 State of
the Union address, and were laying plans for Recovery Summer, a conceit that entirely backfired.
Except on such rare occasions at late stages of the health debate, it was not Obamas style to call in
wavering Democrats to give them an LBJ-style treatmentor to call them in at all, even to discuss major
pending policy decisions. A number of senior Democrats were livid that they were kept in the dark about
the April 13 budget speech, which had evidently been months in preparation. They first heard about it
when David Plouffe, the White House political director, made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, three
days before the speech. Youve heard of the great man theory, says Robert Borosage, who co-directs
the progressive Campaign for Americas Future. They believe in the great speech theory. Obamas
stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention established the novice as presidential timber.
During the campaign, his superb address on race, a subject he dearly wanted to avoid, saved his
candidacy from being destroyed by the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But as president,
much of the time Obama has been AWOL rather than a defining presence driving the debate. His great
speeches, like Aprils budget address, often come late in the game, after concessions have been made and
damage done. Obama seems to relish demonstrating that he can score the occasional touchdown run
starting from his own end zone. But politics, like football, is a game of cumulative scoring. If you
keep giving ground, the clock eventually runs out. Hands off, above the fray, turning the other cheek,
representing decency and common purpose,conserving rather than wielding power, uncomfortable with
popular movements he doesnt controlby some alchemy, this style of leadership is expected to
produce the voter approval that puts polite pressure on the other party to join the quest for consensus.
Reciprocity and compromise then result in effective government and popular adulation. This has been
Obamas operating theory of power. For the most part, it hasnt worked.

Perception of successful policy boosts presidents power to control agenda

professor, 4
It was the sense of national emergency associated with the cold war during the fifties and sixties, after all,
that was the ultimate source of presidential power and American global leadership following World War
II. This means that the fragmented and pluralist political environment that has prevailed since Vietnam
will likely continue in the post-cold war future, posing greater foreign policy opportunities and political
risks for presidents and American leadership abroad. And as the American public focuses its concern
increasingly on intermestic (and especially economic) issues, presidents who are perceived as dealing
successfully with those issues are likely to enjoy an increase in their popularity and ability to govern in
foreign policy and in general. But much will depend on the image that Americans have of a presidents
policies and of their relative success, at home and abroad a function of the turn of events and the
strength of presidential leadership.

AT Political Capital

Persuasion Fails
Presidential rhetoric has no effect on the public or on Congress- empirical data
proves
[Ezra, 3-19-12, New Yorker, The Unpersuaded? Who listens to a President?,
MSG]
In 1993, George Edwards, the director of the Center for Presidential Studies, at Texas A. & M.
University, sponsored a program in Presidential rhetoric. The program led to a conference, and the
organizers asked their patron to present a paper. Edwards didnt know anything about Presidential rhetoric
himself, however, so he asked the organizers for a list of the best works in the field to help him prepare.
Like many political scientists, Edwards is an empiricist. He deals in numbers and tables and charts, and
even curates something called the Presidential Data Archive. The studies he read did not impress him.
One, for example, concluded that public speech no longer attends the processes of governanceit
is governance, but offered no rigorous evidence. Instead, the author justified his findings with
vague statements like One anecdote should suffice to make this latter point.
Nearly twenty years later, Edwards still sounds offended. They were talking about Presidential
speeches as if they were doing literary criticism, he says. I just started underlining the claims that were
faulty. As a result, his conference presentation, Presidential Rhetoric: What Difference Does It Make?,
was less a contribution to the research than a frontal assault on it. The paper consists largely of quotations
from the other political scientists work, followed by comments such as He is able to offer no systematic
evidence, and We have no reason to accept such a conclusion, and Sometimes the authors assertions,
implicit or explicit, are clearly wrong.
Edwards ended his presentation with a study of his own, on Ronald Reagan, who is generally
regarded as one of the Presidencys great communicators. Edwards wrote, If we cannot find
evidence of the impact of the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, then we have reason to reconsider the
broad assumptions regarding the consequences of rhetoric. As it turns out, there was reason to
reconsider. Reagan succeeded in passing major provisions of his agenda, such as the 1981 tax cuts,
but, Edwards wrote, surveys of public opinion have found that support for regulatory programs
and spending on health care, welfare, urban problems, education, environmental protection and aid
to minoritiesall programs that the President opposedincreased rather than decreased during
Reagans tenure. Meanwhile, support for increased defense expenditures was decidedly lower at
the end of his administration than at the beginning. In other words, people were less persuaded by
Reagan when he left office than they were when he took office.
Nor was Reagans Presidency distinguished by an unusually strong personal connection with the
electorate. A study by the Gallup organization, from 2004, found that, compared with all the
Presidential job-approval ratings it had on record, Reagans was slightly below average, at fifty-

three per cent. It was only after he left office that Americans came to see him as an unusually
likable and effective leader.
According to Edwards, Reagans real achievement was to take advantage of a transformation that
predated him. Edwards quotes various political scientists who found that conservative attitudes
peaked, and liberal attitudes plateaued, in the late nineteen-seventies, and that Reagan was the
beneficiary of these trends, rather than their instigator. Some of Reagans closest allies support this
view. Martin Anderson, who served as Reagans chief domestic-policy adviser, wrote, What has been
called the Reagan revolution is not completely, or even mostly, due to Ronald Reagan. . . . It was the other
way around. Edwards later wrote, As one can imagine, I was a big hit with the auditorium full of
dedicated scholars of rhetoric.
Edwardss views are no longer considered radical in political-science circles, in part because he has
marshalled so much evidence in support of them. In his book On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully
Pulpit (2003), he expanded the poll-based rigor that he applied to Reagans rhetorical influence to
that of nearly every other President since the nineteen-thirties. Franklin Delano Roosevelts fireside
chats are perhaps the most frequently cited example of Presidential persuasion. Cue Edwards: He
gave only two or three fireside chats a year, and rarely did he focus them on legislation under
consideration in Congress. It appears that FDR only used a fireside chat to discuss such matters on
four occasions, the clearest example being the broadcast on March 9, 1937, on the ill-fated Courtpacking bill. Edwards also quotes the political scientists Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell, who, in a
more systematic examination of Roosevelts radio addresses, found that they fostered less than a 1
percentage point increase in his approval rating. His more traditional speeches didnt do any
better. He was unable to persuade Americans to enter the Second World War, for example, until
Pearl Harbor.
No President worked harder to persuade the public, Edwards says, than Bill Clinton. Between his
first inauguration, in January, 1993, and his first midterm election, in November, 1994, he travelled to
nearly two hundred cities and towns, and made more than two hundred appearances, to sell his
Presidency, his legislative initiatives (notably his health-care bill), and his party. But his poll numbers fell,
the health-care bill failed, and, in the next election, the Republicans took control of the House of
Representatives for the first time in more than forty years. Yet Clinton never gave up on the idea
that all he needed was a few more speeches, or a slightly better message. Ive got to . . . spend more
time communicating with the American people, the President said in a 1994 interview. Edwards notes,
It seems never to have occurred to him or his staff that his basic strategy may have been inherently
flawed.
George W. Bush was similarly invested in his persuasive ability. After the 2004 election, the Bush
Administration turned to the longtime conservative dream of privatizing Social Security. Bush led
the effort, with an unprecedented nationwide push that took him to sixty cities in sixty days. Let me
put it to you this way, he said at a press conference, two days after the election. I earned capital in the
campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. But the poll numbers for privatizationand
for the Presidentkept dropping, and the Administration turned to other issues.
Obama, too, believes in the power of Presidential rhetoric. After watching the poll numbers for his
health-care plan, his stimulus bill, his Presidency, and his party decline throughout 2010, he told Peter
Baker, of the Times, that he hadnt done a good enough job communicating with the American
people: I think anybody whos occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an

intersection in policy and politics and that you cant be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public
opinion.
The annual State of the Union address offers the clearest example of the misconception. The best
speechwriters are put on the task. The biggest policy announcements are saved for it. The speech is
carried on all the major networks, and Americans have traditionally considered watching it to be
something of a civic duty. And yet Gallup, after reviewing polls dating back to 1978, concluded that
these speeches rarely affect a presidents public standing in a meaningful way, despite the amount
of attention they receive. Obamas 2012 address fit the pattern. His approval rating was forty-six per
cent on the day of the speech, and forty-seven per cent a week later.
Presidents have plenty of pollsters on staff, and they give many speeches in the course of a year. So how
do they so systematically overestimate the importance of those speeches? Edwards believes that by
the time Presidents reach the White House their careers have taught them that they can persuade
anyone of anything. Think about how these guys become President, he says. The normal way is
talking for two years. Thats all you do, and somehow you win. You must be a really persuasive
fellow.
Compartmentalization by Congress means opposition is never persuaded

HG]
Back-room bargains and quiet negotiations do not, however, present an inspiring vision of the Presidency.
And they fail, too. Boehner and Obama spent much of last summer sitting in a room together, but,
ultimately, the Speaker didnt make a private deal with the President for the same reason that
Republican legislators dont swoon over a public speech by him: he is the leader of the Democratic Party,
and if he wins they lose. This suggests that, as the two parties become more sharply divided, it may
become increasingly difficult for a President to governand theres little that he can do about it.
Theorists have long worried over this possibility. They note that our form of government is not common.
As Juan Linz, a professor of political science at Yale, pointed out in a 1989 paper, The only presidential
democracy with a long history of constitutional continuity is the United States. A broad tendency
toward instability and partisan conflict, he writes, is woven into the fabric of a political system in
which a democratically elected executive can come from one party and a democratically elected
legislature from another. Both sides end up having control over some levers of power, a claim to be
carrying out the will of the public, and incentives that point in opposite directions.
The American system has traditionally had certain features that reduced the stakesnotably, political
parties that encompassed a diverse range of opinions and often acted at cross purposes with themselves.
But today the parties operate as disciplined, consistent units. According to Congressional Quarterly, in
2009 and 2010 Democrats and Republicans voted with their parties ninety per cent of the time. That

rigidity has made American democracy much more difficult to manageand it has made the President, as
party leader, a much more divisive figure.
Edwards, ever the data cruncher, has the numbers to back up this perception. When President Obama
took office, he enjoyed a 68 percent approval level, the highest of any newly elected president since John
F. Kennedy, he wrote in a recent paper. For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, however, his early
approval ratings were the most polarized of any president in the past four decades. By February 15,
less than a month after taking office, only 30 percent of Republicans approved of his performance in
office while 89 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Independents approved. The gap between
Democratic and Republican approval had already reached 59 percentage pointsand Obama never again
reached even 30 percent approval among Republicans.
This, Edwards says, is the reality facing modern Presidents, and one they would do well to accommodate.
In a rational world, strategies for governing should match the opportunities to be exploited, he writes.
Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line of presidents who have not been able to transform the
political landscape through their efforts at persuasion. When he succeeded in achieving major change, it
was by mobilizing those predisposed to support him and driving legislation through Congress on a partyline vote.
Thats easier said than done. We dont have a system of government set up for Presidents to drive
legislation through Congress. Rather, we have a system that was designed to encourage division
between the branches but to resist the formation of political parties. The parties formed anyway, and
they now use the branches to compete with one another. Add in minority protections like the filibuster,
and you have a system in which the job of the President is to persuade an opposition party that has both
the incentive and the power to resist him.
Jim Cooper says, Weve effectively lost our Congress and gained a parliament. He adds, At least a
Prime Minister is empowered to get things done, but we have the extreme polarization of a parliament,
with party-line voting, without the empowered Prime Minister. And you cant solve that with a speech.
Theories of presidential persuasion are false American Jobs Act proves

HG]
Richard Neustadt, who died in 2003, was the most influential scholar of the American Presidency. He was
a founder of Harvards Kennedy School of Government and an adviser to Harry Truman, John F.
Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and, in his book Presidential Power (1960), he wrote the
most frequently quoted line in Presidential studies: The power of the presidency is the power to
persuade. On August 31st of last year, President Barack Obama prepared to exercise that power.
Frustrated with the slow recovery of the economy, he wanted to throw the weight of his office
behind a major new stimulus package, the American Jobs Act. To this end, the White House
announced that the President would deliver a televised speech to a joint session of Congress, and, as is

customary, the President sent a letter to the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, asking him to schedule
the address for September 7th. Boehner, the man Obama needed to persuade above all others, said no.
In a written reply to the President, the Speaker said that the House had votes scheduled for six-thirty that
evening. He added, It is my recommendation that your address be held on the following evening, when
we can ensure there will be no parliamentary or logistical impediments that might detract from your
remarks. Few believed that this was all there was to it. Boehners real objection, most thought, was that
the Republican Presidential candidates were scheduled to hold a televised debate at the Reagan Library on
the seventh, and Obamas speech would upstage it. The White House, meanwhile, had its own concerns:
Boehners suggested date would pit the President against the opening game of the N.F.L. season.
No Speaker of the House had ever refused a Presidents request to address a joint session of Congress, but
the House Republicans refused to budge, and the back-and-forth, which was dominating and delighting
the political news media, threatened to overwhelm the Presidents message on jobs. In the end, Obama
agreed to speak on the eighth.
He was in a combative mood, and, after a summer in which the Republicans had driven the economic
debate, with their brinkmanship over the debt ceiling, the Democrats were thrilled to see him take back
the legislative initiative. When the TV ratings came in, the White House was relieved: with thirty-one
million viewers, the President had beaten the N.F.L. But, in the days following the speech, Obamas
approval rating was essentially unchangedaccording to a Gallup poll, it actually dropped a
percentage point. The audience, apparently, had not been won over. Neither had Congress: the
American Jobs Act was filibustered in the Senate and ignored in the House. The White House
attempted to break the act into component parts, but none of the major provisionsexpanded payroll-tax
cuts, infrastructure investment, and a tax credit for businesses that hired unemployed workershave
passed. The Presidents effort at persuasion failed . The question is, could it have succeeded?
Negotiations fail Boehner proves

HG]
One option is to exert private leadership. The Obama Administration has had some success with this
approach. Late in 2010, some observers wondered why the White House, which clearly believed that
there was a need for further stimulus, wasnt pushing Republicans on a payroll-tax cut, one of the few
stimulus measures they had seemed somewhat open to. Then, suddenly, after the midterm election, it
appeared in the tax deal. Axelrod says, We didnt put the payroll-tax cut into our speeches in the fall
because we didnt think we could pass it, and we worried that if we included it in our rhetoric it might
pollute the issue and impair our chances of getting it done after the election.
Back-room bargains and quiet negotiations do not, however, present an inspiring vision of the
Presidency. And they fail, too. Boehner and Obama spent much of last summer sitting in a room
together, but, ultimately, the Speaker didnt make a private deal with the President for the same

reason that Republican legislators dont swoon over a public speech by him: he is the leader of the
Democratic Party, and if he wins they lose. This suggests that, as the two parties become more
sharply divided, it may become increasingly difficult for a President to governand theres little
that he can do about it.
No internal link Presidents do not have persuasive power, they can only use their
agenda setting usefully if the public is behind them
[Ezra, 3-13-12, Washington Post, Presidential persuasion: The case of Iraq,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/presidential-persuasion-the-case-ofiraq/2011/08/25/gIQAzemh9R_blog.html, accessed 7-8-13, MSG]
Kevin Drum responds to my piece on the ineffectiveness of presidential persuasion by asking, in

effect: What about Iraq? The question gets to a weakness in my article. For space reasons, I didnt
spend much time making the distinction between persuasion and agenda setting. But its a
crucial one.
Theres no doubt that the president can focus both the public and the political system on a
particular issue. Iraq is the ultimate example. Neither Congress nor the American people were thinking
very much about Saddam Hussein and Iraq in July 2001, or even in October 2001. By the middle of
2003, it was all they were thinking about. Thats the power of presidential agenda setting. It is,
perhaps, the most significant power the president possesses.
But it, too, is a limited power. In particular, its limited, at least in my view, by the fact that presidents
are typically unable to persuade the public or the Congress of things they dont already believe.
This is what keeps the president from being, in political scientist George Edwardss terminology, a
director of change and makes him instead a facilitator of change.
So the question with Iraq is whether its an example of agenda setting, persuasion or both?
The polling suggests that although Iraq was a remarkable example of ambitious and sustained
agenda setting, was not necessarily an example of persuasion. John Sides posts this graph from Gary
Jacobson:
The American people, in other words, were persuaded of the virtue of removing Saddam Hussein
long before 9/11. They may not have seen it as something we needed to do right this second, or even as
the best use of federal resources, but when asked whether they were for or against it, they were for it.
Bush used 9/11 to make Iraq a high-priority issue, and his administration did expend considerable
persuasive energy justifying this decision. But they were working from a base line in which most
Americans, when asked, agreed that we should overthrow Hussein.
That doesnt take away from Bushs achievement, such as it was. He saw that 9/11 presented an
opportunity to invade Iraq, and he was very effective in using his agenda-setting power to make
that happen. If not for him, the fact that Americans were passively in favor of regime change in

Iraq wouldnt have mattered. But if Americans hadnt been against regime change in Iraq if he
hadnt been working off of a favorable base line its not clear he could have succeeded.
To put it another way, it sounds obvious to the point of being silly to say that if Bush had asked
Congress to authorize war with Peru, they wouldnt have done it. But thats actually precisely the
point: There was a preexisting willingness to finish the job in Iraq, and that was crucial to Bushs
success. If the persuasion lift had been larger, the war likely wouldnt have happened.
That said, you can see something else I argue in that graph: Bushs efforts on Iraq eventually polarized
public opinion. In 2001, large majorities of Democrats and Republicans supported further action
against Hussein. By 2004, only 20 percent of Democrats supported the war.
Kevin also argues that Ronald Reagans presidency changed the publics attitude towards taxation
in an enduring way. This is conventional wisdom, but its not evident in the polling. If anything, the
belief that the income tax people paid was too high fell after Reagan:
Its clear that Reagans presidency and, perhaps as importantly, George H.W. Bushs presidency
changed the politics of taxes inside the Republican Party. But Im not certain that the countrys
attitude toward taxes changed dramatically. Bill Clinton raised taxes when he was president, and he
seemed to do okay. More recently, Barack Obama has had considerable success arguing for tax increases
on wealthier Americans. But Im sure theres more thorough scholarship on this subject, and Im open to
being proved wrong.

Persuasion Backfires
Presidential persuasion backfires compartmentalizes policymakers and increases
opposition to proposals
HG]
But being President isnt the same as running for President. When youre running for President, giving a
good speech helps you achieve your goals. When you are President, giving a good speech can prevent
you from achieving them.
In January, 2004, George W. Bush announced his intention to take the next steps of space
exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond. It was an occasion that might have
presented a moment of bipartisan unity: a Republican President was proposing to spend billions of
dollars on a public project to further John F. Kennedys dream of venturing deep into the cosmos. As
Frances Lee, now a professor at the University of Maryland, recalls, That wasnt a partisan issue at all.
Democrats had no position on sending a mission to Mars. But, she says, they suddenly began to
develop one. They began to believe it was a waste of money. Congressional Democrats pushed the
argument in press releases, public statements, and television appearances. In response, the White House,
which had hinted that the Mars mission would feature prominently in the State of the Union address,
dropped it from the speech.
The experience helped to crystallize something that Lee had been thinking about. Most of the work on
the relationship between the President and Congress was about the President as the agenda setter, she
says. I was coming at it from the perspective of the increase in partisanship, and so I looked at Presidents
not as legislative leaders but as party leaders. That changes things dramatically. As Lee writes in her
book Beyond Ideology (2009), there are inherent zero-sum conflicts between the two parties
political interests as they seek to win elections. Put more simply, the Presidents party cant win unless
the other party loses. And both parties know it. This, Lee decided, is the true nature of our political
system.
To test her theory, she created a database of eighty-six hundred Senate votes between 1981 and 2004. She
found that a Presidents powers of persuasion were strong, but only within his own party. Nearly four
thousand of the votes were of the mission-to-Mars varietythey should have found support among both
Democrats and Republicans. Absent a Presidents involvement, these votes fell along party lines just a
third of the time, but when a President took a stand that number rose to more than half. The same thing
happened with votes on more partisan issues, such as bills that raised taxes; they typically split along
party lines, but when a President intervened the divide was even sharper.
One way of interpreting this is that party members let their opinion of the President influence their
evaluation of the issues. Thats not entirely unreasonable. A Democrat might have supported an
intervention in Iraq but questioned George W. Bushs ability to manage it effectively. Another

interpretation is that party members let their political incentives influence how they evaluate policy.
Whatever people think about raw policy issues, theyre aware that Presidential successes will help the
Presidents party and hurt the opposing party, Lee says. Its not to say theyre entirely cynical, but the
fact that success is useful to the Presidents party is going to have an effect on how members respond.
Or, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, its difficult to get a man to support something if his relection depends
on his not supporting it.
Both parties are guilty of this practice. Karl Rove, President Bushs deputy chief of staff, recalls
discussing the Social Security privatization plan with a sympathetic Democrat on the House Ways and
Means Committee. He says that the representative told him, You wouldnt get everything you want and I
wouldnt get everything I want, but we could solve the problem. But I cant do it because my leadership
wont let me. Rove says, It was less about Social Security than it was about George W. Bush. At
various times during the nineteen-nineties, Clinton and other Democrats had been open to adding some
form of private accounts to Social Security, and in 1997 there were, reportedly, quiet discussions between
Democrats and Republicans about doing exactly that. In theory, this background might have led to a
compromise in 2005, but Bushs aggressive sales pitch had polarized the issue.
The Obama Administration was taken by surprise when congressional Republicans turned against
the individual mandate in health-care reform; it was the Republicans, after all, who had
championed the idea, in 1993, as an alternative to the Clinton initiative. During the next decade, dozens
of Senate Republicans co-sponsored health-care plans that included a mandate. Mitt Romney, of course,
passed one when he was governor of Massachusetts. In 2007, when Senator Jim DeMint, of South
Carolinanow a favorite of the Tea Partyendorsed Romney for President, he cited his health-care plan
as a reason for doing so.
Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah, who supported the mandate before he opposed it, shrugs off his partys
change of heart. We were fighting Hillarycare, he has said, of the Republicans original position. In
other words, Clinton polarized Republicans against one health-care proposal, and then Obama turned
them against another.

Political Capital Theory Flawed

Political capital theory is vague and impossible to quantify
Soha, University of North Texas Associate Professor, and Rottinghaus, University of
Houston Associate professor, 13
[Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha and Brandon Rottinghaus, March 2013, Presidential Studies Quarterly 43, no.
1, Presidential Position Taking and the
Puzzle of Representation, Page 5, CB]
These studies limit what we can conclude about presidential representation for two primary
reasons. First, many of studies of presidential representation do not take specific presidential
positions into account. Instead, they amalgamate all liberal or conservative positions by the
president as a way to test for responsiveness. Although this provides an excellent broad measure of
ideology, it may miss presidential responsiveness to important subgroups that are important to
presidential success in Congress and reelection. This may also miss important issues not included in the
measure or which do not load on a traditional left-right scale (Page 2002). A second issue is that, without
specific policies to explore representation, we may overstate the presidents representational qualities.
For example, if a president unveils a predominately liberal policy but only talks about the
conservative elements, one might misrepresent to whom the president responds with his legislative
agenda. Presidents could also be forced to take public positions in response to circumstances
outside of their control, which might overrepresent these issues as part of the presidents larger
policy agenda. Related to this, minor deviations in responsive tendencies are coded the same as large
deviations. For instance, Canes-Wrone and Shottss (2004) dichotomous measure of congruence may
overstate or understate presidential representation in that even a small increase or decrease in the
presidents budgetary request would be coded as being fully congruent with the public.

No Spillover
No spilloverissues are compartmentalized
Dickinson, Middlebury College Political Science Department Chair, 9
[Matthew, 5/26/9, Middlebury College, Sotomayor, Obama, and Presidential Power,
http://sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2009/05/26/sotamayor-obama-and-presidentialpower/, accessed 7/13/14, AC]
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 presidents 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 presidents 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 presidents preferences? How often is a
presidents 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 shes 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 presidents veto power for the moment.)
Despite the much publicized and celebrated instances of presidential arm-twisting during the
legislative endgame, then, most legislative outcomes dont 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 agenda-setting not arm-twisting. And we see this in
the Sotomayor 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 Obamas lobbying
from here on in (or lack thereof). His real influence has already occurred, in the decision to present
Sotomayor as his nominee.
If we want to measure Obamas power, then, we need to know what his real preference was and why he
chose Sotomayor. My guess and it is only a guess is that after conferring with leading Democrats and
Republicans, he recognized the overriding practical political advantages accruing from choosing an
Hispanic woman, with left-leaning credentials. We cannot know if this would have been his ideal choice
based on judicial philosophy alone, but presidents are never free to act on their ideal preferences. Politics

is the art of the possible. Whether Sotomayer is his first choice or not, however, her nomination is a
reminder that the power of the presidency often resides in the presidents ability to dictate the alternatives
from which Congress (or in this case the Senate) must choose. Although Republicans will undoubtedly
attack Sotomayor for her judicial activism (citing in particular her decisions regarding promotion and
affirmative action), her comments regarding the importance of gender and ethnicity in influencing her
decisions, and her views regarding whether appellate courts make policy, they run the risk of alienating
Hispanic voters an increasingly influential voting bloc (to the extent that one can view Hispanics as a
voting bloc!) I find it very hard to believe she will not be easily confirmed. In structuring the
alternative before the Senate in this manner, then, Obama reveals an important aspect of
presidential power that cannot be measured through legislative boxscores.

AT Political Capital Key [Beckmann and Kumar]

Beckmann and Kumar admit its situational their political theories offer varied
results and propositions depending on who is in congress and how much political
capital the president has right now
However, if spending political capital in the service of vote-centered and agenda- centered strategies
is 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.
Their model assumes the President spending political capital and adapting perfectly
One important point: in anticipating how the game will be played and exactly how much he can
influence pivotal voters, in our model the president never proposes something which the opposition
leader can defeat. This point is important because our presidents strategically adapt their proposals to
meet practical realities, and, as such, the appropriate measure of a presidents success is not passage
per se, but rather the substance of what passes (or does not). In practice, presidents do not seem to
adapt their proposals so strategically (Light, 1982; Peterson, 1990), so s real-world empirical
referent is better thought of as what the president signs into law (if anything) rather than what he
proposes. In terms of content, how close is the outcome to what the president actually preferred?


AT GOP Compromise
Republican obstructionism impedes Obama from passing legislation
Sargent, Washington Post, 13
[Greg, 7/9/13, The Washington Post, Sabotage governing, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plumline/wp/2013/07/09/sabotage-governing/, accessed 7/10/13, AS]
Its not unusual to hear dirty hippie liberal blogger types (and the occasional lefty Nobel Prize
winner) point out that todays GOP has effectively abdicated the role of functional opposition party,
instead opting for a kind of post-policy nihilism in which sabotaging the Obama agenda has become
its only guiding governing light.
But when you hear this sort of argument coming from Chuck Todd, the mild-mannered, well respected
Beltway insider, it should prompt folks to take notice. Thats essentially what Todd, along with Mark
Murray and the rest of MSNBCs First Read crew, argued this morning. Its worth quoting at length: More
on The Plum Line Happy Hour Roundup Jonathan Bernstein 8 hours ago Our nightly wrap-up of news
and opinion. GOP response to farm bill debacle: Move it further to the right Greg Sargent 9 hours ago But
that isn't good enough for conservatives, either. So now what? Pelosi to Boehner: Immigration reform
must be comprehensive Greg Sargent 12 hours ago The Democratic leader issues a subtle threat to the
House GOP leader. GOP opposition to gay workplace equality will do wonders for that `makeover Greg
Sargent 14 hours ago The coming debate over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act gives the GOP
another shot to revive that "makeover" that has fallen by the wayside. Heres a thought exercise on this
summer morning: Imagine that after the controversial Medicare prescription-drug legislation was passed
into law in 2003, Democrats did everything they could to thwart one of George W. Bushs top
domestic achievements. They launched Senate filibusters to block essential HHS appointees from
administering the law; they warned the sports and entertainment industries from participating in
any public service announcements to help seniors understand how the law works; and, after taking
control of the House of Representatives in 2007, they used the power of the purse to prohibit any
more federal funds from being used to implement the law. As it turns out, none of that happened.
And despite Democratic warnings that the law would be a bust we remember the 2004 Dem
presidential candidates campaigning against it the Medicare prescription-drug law has been, for the
most part, a pretty big success.
But that thought exercise has become a reality 10 years later as Republicans have worked to
thwart/stymie/sabotage pick your word the implementation of President Obamas health-care and
financial-reform laws.
Recently, the top-two Senate Republicans Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn wrote a letter to
the NFL and other major sports leagues warning them not to participate in any campaign to
promote implementation of Obamacare. The Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity is in
unchartered waters running TV ads to help prevent the law from being implemented, while the Obama
political arm is also on the air promoting implementation. And Senate Republicans have vowed to
filibuster any nominee (no matter how qualified) to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under
the financial-reform law. [...]

And this all raises the question: Whats the line between fighting for your ideology and ensuring that
the government that pays your salaries actually works or even attempts to work? At some point,
governing has to take place, but when does that begin? We know what opponents will say in response
to this: These are bad laws, and we have to do whatever it takes to stop them. But at what point does an
election have a governing consequence?
For more on that effort by top Republicans to warn the NFL off of participating in any campaign to
promote Obamacare, see Jonathan Bernsteins piece.
This from MSNBCs First Read crew is very well said. But Id take it further; it goes well beyond
Obama care implementation and the relentless blockading of Obama nominees for the explicit
purpose of preventing democratically-created agencies from functioning. Weve slowly crossed over
into something a bit different. Its now become accepted as normal that Republicans will threaten
explicitly to allow harm to the country to get what they want, and will allow untold numbers of
Americans to be hurt rather than even enter into negotiations over the sort of compromises that lie
at the heart of basic governing.
Sam Steins big piece today details the very real toll the sequester cuts are taking on real people across the
country, and crucially, it explains that the sequester was deliberately designed to threaten harm in
order to compel lawmakers to act to reduce the deficit. But Republicans will not consider replacing
those cuts with anything other than 100 percent in cuts elsewhere, which is to say, they will only
consider replacing them with 100 percent of what they want. Meanwhile, Republicans are drawing up a
list of spending cuts they will demand in exchange for raising the debt limit, even though John
Boehner has openly admitted that default would do untold damage to the U.S. economy. Indeed, even if
default doesnt end up happening, the threat of it risks damaging the economy, yet Republicans still
insist they will use it as leverage to get what they want, anyway.
As Todd and the First Read crew hint at, the GOP campaign against Obamacare is straying into this
mode of governing. Indeed, on Meet the Press this weekend, Todd made this even more explicit,
accusing Republicans of trying to sabotage the law. The current GOP campaign isnt just about
opposing the Affordable Care Act or arguing for its repeal. Its about making it harder for uninsured
Americans to gain access to coverage under a law passed and signed by a democratically elected
Congress and President, and upheld by the Supreme Court, in service of the political goal of making it a
greater liability for Democrats in the 2014 elections (the law, after all, isnt going to get repealed).
This is not typical opposition, and its good to hear this stated outright by someone as respected inside the
Beltway as Chuck Todd. The only mystery is why more journalists arent willing to point it out. After
all, Republicans are making this basic reality harder and harder to ignore.

AT Public Persuasion

No Audience
Bully pulpit is irrelevant in the technological eratheir evidence doesnt account
for Obamas inability to secure an audience
Zelizer, Princeton University professor of history and public affairs, 11
(Julian E., 7/11/11, CNN Opinion, President's bully pulpit is not what it used to be,
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/11/zelizer.obama.twitter/index.html, Accessed 7/8/13, JC)
During the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy, Johnson or Nixon spoke, the choice was to hear them or
turn off the television and radio. Today, if President Obama wanted to conduct a fireside chat, it is
doubtful that many people would be listening.
With the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, the media were also able to shed the appearance of
neutrality and objectivity. Every perspective did not have to receive equal time. On many television
and radio stations, objective reporters have been replaced with openly partisan commentators. Any
presidential message is quickly surrounded by polemical instant commentary that diminishes the
power of what he says.
Making matters worse, on the Internet, presidents can't even fully control the time they have as they
must compete with live blogs and video commentary as they try to share their message. Even within
most households, the era of the single family television is gone. Now in many middle-class families
everyone has their own media and is watching their own thing.
President Obama has gone to great lengths to find new ways to reach the American people. But he is
trying to achieve a 20th-century goal in a century when it is no longer possible. The reality is that
presidents, Democrat or Republican, will have to find new ways to exercise what power they have
and should no longer expect the opportunity to simply take their case to the public.
Obama cant use the bully pulpithis agenda gets drowned out by other issues
Goldman, Bloomberg News chief White House correspondent, 5/23/13
(Julianna, May 23 2013, Bloomberg News, Obama Bully Pulpit Bullied With Congress Probes
Obscuring Agenda, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-24/obama-bully-pulpit-bullied-withcongress-probes-obscuring-agenda.html, Accessed 7/8/13, JC)
President Barack Obama renewed his oath of office in January vowing to use the bully pulpit to rally
the American people around his second-term agenda.
Now, with a trio of controversies fueled by relentless attacks from congressional Republicans, the
limits of the presidential megaphone are on display.

Since it was revealed on May 10 that the Internal Revenue Service improperly screened Tea Party and
other smaller-government groups seeking tax-exempt status, the president has struggled to shift the focus.
Press conferences with foreign leaders, a new campaign to sell his economic plans and yesterdays
announcement of his new counter-terrorism policy have been overshadowed in news reports.
The bully pulpit has got a little bit of a drape over it when youve got everyone throwing rotten
tomatoes over it, said Mike McCurry, who served as press secretary to former President Bill Clinton.
Obama has a limited window to galvanize Americans, put his stamp on revamping the nations
immigration laws, pursue climate-change legislation and ensure that the plan to expand health
coverage to tens of millions of the uninsured is carried out in the face of Republican resistance.
Every day that his message is overtaken by the static noise of congressional probes -- into the Justice
Departments seizure of phone records from the Associated Press, the administrations handling of the
September attack on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, and questions about what White House aides
knew about the IRS scandal and when they knew it -- is a missed opportunity.

No Opinion Shift
Bully pulpit is only effective on issues popular with the publicpushing
controversial policies backfires
National Journal 5/30/13
(Sophie Quinton, The Bully Pulpit Wont Help Obama Get a Grand Bargain,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/the-bully-pulpit-won-t-help-obama-get-a-grand-bargain20121029, Accessed 7/8/13, JC)
The Obama campaign believes in taking its message to the American people. But history shows that,
when it comes to the tough issues, use of the bully pulpit can backfire. As Congress faces its toughest
negotiating challenge yet, the next president may want to consider keeping a low profile.
The bully pulpit can work when a president takes advantage of a groundswell of public support that
already exists. But when a president takes a high-profile stance on a controversial issue, it makes it
harder for the opposing party to support his plan.
When you raise the profile of the issues, you also raise the political stakes for members of Congress
on both sides of the aisle. It makes it harder for the members of your own party to oppose you, but it
makes it harder for members of the opposite party to support you, said Frances Lee, professor of
American politics at the University of Maryland.
President George W. Bush launched his second term with a very public push for Social Security
privatization. He got nowhere. In fact, public support declined, Lee said.
We determined that if we were going to have a chance to get Social Security reformed it was not going
to be the kind of thing that we could just get done, quietly, in Congress, said Tony Fratto, a partner at
Hamilton Place Strategies and former communications adviser in the Bush White House. The Bush team
believed that the public first needed to learn why privatization made sense, Fratto said.
My instinct would always be to go out and try to educate more when it comes to complicated issues,
Fratto said. But he admitted that an aggressive communications strategy on such issues hasnt had the
best track record.
President Clinton campaigned all around the country to try to raise support for his health care plan
and failed. The Obama White House tried everything from speeches and town hall meetings to blog
posts and tweets to try to rally the public around health care reform. The lawwhich was based on
what were initially Republican ideaswas rammed through Congress on a party line vote.
Democrats love it. Republicans despise it.
President Reagan, remembered as the great communicator, had the benefit of a cross-party
coalition in Congress that no longer exists, Lee said.

Theory Aff

DA Not Intrinsic
A logical policymaker could pass the plan and the agenda itembills are considered
separately

Fiat Solves the Link

We should assume that the plan passes instantly without the legislative process so we
can have better debates about the effects of the plan not the process

No Link Bottom of the docket

The plan is placed at the bottom of the legislative docket so it doesnt draw PC
normal means

No Link Winding Way

The plan has to work its way through committees and readings before it makes it to
the floor and bills dont draw fire or require political capital until before the final
floor vote--means that Obama doesnt have to spend political capital until the
agenda item has already been passed

No Internal Link Congress Wont Backlash Against Itself

If the plan passes it means a majority of Congress voted for itthey wont get mad
at themselves for their own votes

Non-Unique Voting Neg Links Anyway

This debate round is the congressional debatemeans that political capital has
already been spent in the process of discussing the planno matter how you vote it
triggers the link so you should vote aff on a risk of the case

NSA Reform Aff

Uniqueness

Wont Pass
House version of the bill wont pass the Senate too watered down
Macri, The Daily Caller, 6/17/14
[Giuseppe, 6/17/14, The Daily Caller, Senators Reject Watered Down NSA Reform,
http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/17/senators-reject-watered-down-nsa-reform/#ixzz35uAU6vGB, accessed
7/13/14, GNL]
Three U.S. senators renewed their intent to drastically curb National Security Agency dragnet
surveillance in a Tuesday op-ed, which criticized the House for passing watered down reform.
Kentucky Republican Rand Paul along with Democrats Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of
Colorado pledged to fight such limited legislation aimed at reducing the size, scope and authority of
the National Security Agency in the wake of the bulk surveillance leaks by former contractor Edward
Snowden.
This is clearly not the meaningful reform that Americans have demanded, so we will vigorously
oppose this bill in its current form and continue to push for real changes to the law, the lawmakers
wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
This firm commitment to both liberty and security is what Americans including the dedicated men
and women who work at our nations intelligence agencies deserve, they said. We will not settle for
less.
According to the senators, real bulk surveillance reform must close the loophole allowing NSA to
surveil the emails of some Americans without warrants, add a special privacy advocate to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (which oversees intelligences agencies legal authority) and
end the bulk collection of Americans phone records.
In its original form the U.S.A. Freedom Act contained all of those measures, all of which were
compromised, edited or retracted before the bill went to the floor for a vote last month.
The privacy advocates position was reduced to a friend-of-the-court panel, and concerns have since been
raised that the bill in its current form could actually allow for a new form of spying on Americans phone
calls.
Although the bill approved by the House is intended to end bulk collection, we are not at all
confident that it would actually do so, the senators wrote.
The bill is currently undergoing committee scrutiny in the upper chamber, where lawmakers across
the aisle have expressed concerns over both its potential to limit important programs critical to national
security, and its potential to fall short of protecting the privacy of Americans electronic communications.

Internal Link

Obama Not Key

Others can reconcile House bill to get through the Senate
Tummarello, The Hill, 6/3/14
[Kate, 6/3/14, The Hill, Chambliss: House NSA reforms go a little bit too far,
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/208086-chambliss-house-nsa-reforms-go-a-little-bit-toofar#ixzz35rpzTveB, accessed 7/13/14, GNL]
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said the surveillance reform bill that passed the House last month goes
too far in ending some of the National Security Agencys (NSA) sweeping surveillance programs.
I actually think they went a little bit too far on the bulk collection side of it, Chambliss the top
Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday while speaking a Bloomberg
event on cybersecurity.
In May, the House passed the USA Freedom Act, aimed at reining in and increasing transparency and
accountability around the NSAs surveillance programs.
Though a compromise version of the bill was unanimously passed by the House Intelligence and
Judiciary Committees which had warred over who had ultimate jurisdiction privacy advocates and
some House members said the bill as further watered down after the committees votes and does not do
enough to end bulk surveillance.
On Tuesday, Chambliss said he thinks the House bill is actually too aggressive, but said he is open to
discussing some changes to the surveillance programs, including increased transparency measures and
shorter retention periods for data.
Its not going to be easy to bring together the senators on opposite sides of the spectrum when it
comes to surveillance reform, he said, adding that he welcomes the debate.
Chambless said that he and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (DCalif.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and ranking member
Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) will be able to reconcile any differences between the House bill and
a reform bill that comes out of the Senate.
Im confident that Rogers, Ruppersberger, Dianne and I can bridge that gap quickly if we can get a bill
out of the Senate, he said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has a hearing on surveillance reforms scheduled for Thursday, the one
year anniversary of the first leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that prompted the calls
for surveillance reform.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) co-author of the USA Freedom Act said his
committee will turn to surveillance reform this summer.

Impact Turns


EU Relations
Resolving NSA controversy solves EU-US relations
Dempsey, Carnegie Europe senior associate, 14
[Judy, 2-3-14, Carnegie Europe, Kerrys Lost Opportunity for Transatlantic Relations,
http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=54408, 7-13-14, AAZ]
When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew into Berlin on January 31, expectations were high that
the United States was finally taking seriously its allies anger about the National Security Agencys
pervasive spying.
U.S. snooping is an issue that is refusing to disappear from German newspaper headlines . Crucially,
it is increasingly straining transatlantic relations a situation that neither the Americans nor the
Europeans can afford to ignore.
At a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Kerry spoke casually of bumps in the road.
Yet he gave absolutely no reassurance about the United States future policy on spying, neither
during his Berlin meetings nor afterward at this years Munich Security Conference.
In fact, when he spoke to his audience of high-ranking politicians, diplomats, and foreign and security
policy specialists in the Bavarian capital, he didnt even mention the NSA. Nor did U.S. Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel bother to raise the issue publicly.
That was a mistake .
It is not only the German public that needs reassurances and explanations about the scope of the
NSAs reach. It is about restoring trust between the United States and all its European allies. Given
the huge issues that governments on both sides of the Atlantic have to tackle, such trust is necessary more
than ever.
If the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama wants to start rebuilding trust in the
transatlantic relationship , it needs to embark on much more active public diplomacy . And that
means sending very senior people to European countries to do just that, said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the
president of Estonia, who also took part in the Munich summit.
In that sense, Kerry and Hagel squandered the opportunity to use the high-level conference as a platform
to reach out to German and European audiences. The pair did nothing to address the trend identified
in a recent poll by German public television that only 57 percent of Germans believe that relations with
the United States are good, down from 92 percent in 2012.
Instead, Kerry spent much of his speech recalling his childhood in Europe and stressing Americas
commitment to NATO and to Europe. He and Hagel cited all the places and all the conflicts in which the
United States was engaged, to prove that America was not turning in on itself. In short, conference
participants were told that everything was just fine with the transatlantic relationship.

Yet the State of the Union address that Obama gave in Washington on January 28 presented a very
different picture, causing genuine concern not only to European governments but also to U.S.
foreign policy experts. In that speech, there was scant mention of Ukraine. There was little serious
attention paid to Syria, and nothing about Russia or China. NATO and Europe received only passing
references.
But at least Obama did mention that U.S. surveillance methods were being reviewed. That is exactly what
Kerry and Hagel should have said in Munich. They should have acknowledged how much the NSA
scandal has hurt transatlantic relations, and they should have explained what Washington plans to
do about that.
An equally important dimension to the spying scandal is Russia. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president,
must be having a field day. The more Edward Snowden, a former NSA official who has been given
asylum in Russia, leaks classified information, the more those revelations weaken transatlantic ties. Putin
must be delighted about the wedge being driven between the United States and its European allies, in
particular Germany.
Neither Obama nor Merkel can afford to ignore this state of affairs. They both need each other more than
ever, on issues ranging from the unrest in Ukraine to the negotiations on a new Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership. It would be so damaging for the United States and the EU if certain political
parties and influential nongovernmental organizations in Europe were to exploit the NSA scandal to
jeopardize those talks.
The United States must understand that its allies anger over being spied on wont simply blow
over. Ignoring that sentiment carries real costs in terms of influence and policies. Some plain talking
from John Kerry and others is sorely needed.
NSA spying scandal has ruined relations reform solves credibility

Smith-Spark, CNN, 13
[Laura, 10-24-13, CNN, Germany's Angela Merkel: Relations with U.S. 'severely shaken' over spying
claims, http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/24/world/europe/europe-summit-nsa-surveillance/, accessed 7-1314, AAZ]
That's what German Chancellor Angela Merkel firmly asserted early Friday -- as she had the previous day
-- in the wake of reports the U.S. National Security Agency had eavesdropped on her cell phone.
This claim and others that she and other world leaders have been spied on had " severely shaken"
relationships between Europe and the United States , the German leader said.
"Obviously, words will not be sufficient ," Merkel said in the wee hours Friday at a summit of European
Union leaders. "True change is necessary ."

Talk of the NSA's reported spying on Germany and other allies dominated Merkel's news
conference in Brussels, Belgium. It illustrated the anger over this story in Europe and the
challenges facing Washington because of it.
The Chancellor insisted she isn't the only one concerned; other European leaders, she said, voiced
similar sentiments during the first day of the summit Thursday.
Her comments echoed some she'd made upon arriving Thursday in Belgium, when she said that
discussions of "what sort of data protection do we need and what transparency is there" should now be on
European leaders' agenda.
"We need trust,..." she said. "Spying among friends is never acceptable."
U.S. President Barack Obama understands it's a "necessity" for change from his nation's perspective,
according to Merkel, who spoke with the American leader on Wednesday after Germany's government
said it had information the United States might have monitored her phone.
She told Obama that eavesdropping among friends is "never acceptable, no matter in what situation," she
said.
On Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney repeated what he said Wednesday -- that Obama
assured Merkel that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor her communications.
And in a USA Today op-ed published online Thursday night, Obama's homeland security and
counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco conceded that recent "disclosures have created significant
challenges in our relationships." To address them, the President has ordered a "review (of) our
surveillance capabilities, including with our foreign partners," she wrote.
"We want to ensure we are collecting information because we need it and not because we can," said
Monaco.

TTIP (Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership)

Resolving NSA credibility issues is key to TTIP passage
Maxim, Council on Foreign Relations research associate, 14
[Robert, 1-15-14, Council on Foreign Relations, How Obamas NSA Reforms Could Help TTIP,
http://blogs.cfr.org/renewing-america/2014/01/15/how-obamas-nsa-reforms-could-help-ttip/, accessed 713-14, AAZ]
On Friday President Obama will unveil his plan to curb the surveillance practices of the National
Security Agency (NSA). When he does, he could inadvertently give a boost to the ambitious U.S.European Union free trade negotiations. Last June, just weeks before the first round of
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, Edward Snowden revealed
that U.S. government agencies were collecting millions of European citizens personal data. Though
TTIP is colloquially known as a trade agreement, its primary focus is regulatory barriers, not
lowering tariffs. The United States wants to use TTIP to prevent barriers to the international
transfer of personal datathe very data that the NSA was collecting in bulk. The disclosures
provoked outrage among EU officials, and several European heads of state threatened to call off the
trade talks . Though negotiations have since begun, European concerns about privacy need to be
alleviated in order to ensure the continued free flow of data. In recent months the EU has dropped its
strident rhetoric and began to seek compromise with the United States. President Obama should take
advantage of the opening.
Privacy is considered a fundamental human right in Europe. In 1995 the EU passed the Data
Protection Directive, which codified the right to privacy of personal data. This directive prohibits the
transfer of an individuals personal information to countries that the European Union deems to have
inadequate privacy standards, including the United States. Transferring personal data such as names,
credit card information, birthdates, or telephone numbers across borders is essential to international trade,
and has only grown more important with the rise of the Internet economy. In order to ensure that this type
of data could continue to be exchanged, the two parties established a Safe Harbor agreement in 2000.
This agreement allowed American companies that voluntarily complied with the Data Protection
Directive to transfer personal information back to the United States.
In response to the Snowden revelations, the European Parliament called for a full review of the Safe
Harbor program, which was led by the European Commissions Justice Minister Viviane Reding. In the
wake of the disclosures, Ms. Reding was among the most outspoken critics of the Safe Harbor agreement.
She argued that Safe Harbor could be a loophole undermining EU data protection laws, and that it was
time for the development of European clouds so that the U.S. government could not access European
citizens data.
The two sides came to a working agreement in early July, launching separate privacy negotiations
alongside TTIP. In theory this structure would allow the trade negotiations to continue even if the two
sides could not agree on how to proceed on privacy. In reality, it would be nearly impossible to

complete a trade agreement containing provisions ensuring the free flow of data without resolving
the issue of privacy protections for that data.
In November the EU offered an olive branch. The European Commission published its Safe Harbor
review, and called for only moderate reforms to the program. The recommendations included requiring
Safe Harbor companies to disclose whether U.S. law allows public authorities to collect data from them,
making dispute resolution processes available and affordable to individuals, and enhancing inspections of
Safe Harbor compliance and fraud. Considering the staunch public posturing by many EU officials, the
report came as a surprise. However, a full overhaul of American privacy law (which is formed from a
hodgepodge of different provisions in the Constitution, consumer protection laws, and federal case law,
rather than a single directive like the EU) would have been a non-starter, and could have derailed the
wider TTIP negotiations. TTIP will be a boon for the EU economy, with studies predicting gains of up
to 119 billion per year for EU GDP. By maintaining a hard line on privacy, Europe may have lost out on
those economic gains, and the United States probably would not have changed its privacy laws anyway.
It is in the United States interest to implement the EUs Safe Harbor recommendations. They are
good policies, and will serve as a lifeline for EU negotiators to move past the privacy issue. Additionally,
President Obama should incorporate the recommendation from his presidential advisory committee that
the personal data of non-U.S. citizens be treated with the same protections as data on American citizens.
This will show that the United States has learned from the incident and is committed to treating its allies
as equals.
Europe is currently undergoing an overhaul of its own privacy laws, which will keep the issue on
the forefront of many peoples minds. This is not just an issue that the two sides can wait out . A
trade agreement that protects the free flow of data without resolving how governments can collect and use
private data may not gain popular support within Europe. And losing popular support could doom the
TTIP effort.
TTIP solves the Euro crisis

Hamilton, Center for Transatlantic Relations Director, and Schwartz, Economics
Professor, 12
[Daniel S., Executive Director of the American Consortium on EU Studies; Austrian Marshall Plan
Foundation Research Professor. Hamilton leads the international policy work of The Johns Hopkins
Center for the Study of High Consequence Event Preparedness and Response; former deputy assistant
secretary of State for European Affairs; US special coordinator for Southeast European Stabilization,
Pedro, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain and CATO Adjunct Scholar, January 2012, New
Direction: The Foundation for European Rerform,, A Transatlantic Free Trade Area A Boost to
Economic Growth?, http://transatlantic.saisjhu.edu/publications/articles/TAP_op_ed_Jan_2012_final.pdf, p. 1-2, accessed 6/28/14, AC]
European leaders continue to squabble about efforts needed to end the euro crisis, but they have
coalesced around calls in late January 2012 by German Chancellor Merkel, French President Sarkozy
and British Prime Minister Cameron to open transatlantic markets. US President Obama has also

endorsed the bid. At the US-EU Summit last fall, leaders created a bilateral High Level Working
Group on Jobs and Growth to consider the full range of measures that could be taken to deepen and
expand the transatlantic economic relationship. The benefits could be substantial in terms of creating
jobs, boosting innovation, improving our competitiveness, and ensuring long-term growth and prosperity.
It is a moment of opportunity to use or to lose. To win the moment, business and other economic
stakeholders must unite with political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to advance a shared vision,
built on underlying values, to harness the potential of our partnership to create jobs, stimulate
growth, and strengthen the multilateral system.
Eurozone crisis undermines US global leadership

Dobriansky, Harvard's International Affairs senior fellow, and Saunders, Center for
the National Interest Director, 12
[Paula, Paul, July 8, Wall Street Journal ,How About a Free-Trade Deal With Europe?,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304141204577510700096660154.html, accessed
6/28/14, AC]
Europe's ongoing economic crisis and the evident discord among its key leaders have profound
implications for the United States. Despite a new agreement during the most recent European Union
summit last month, the crisis will likely endure for some time, with unpredictable political and
economic consequences. Visionary and determined American leadership is essential both to help some
of our closest and oldest allies and to protect our national interests, domestically and internationally.
The deep links between the American and European economies are not always fully appreciated.
According to a recent study by the German Marshall Fund, European investment amounted to 72% of
total foreign direct investment in the U.S. in 2010. U.S.-EU merchandise trade reached $632 billion in
2011.
The same study found that affiliates of European majority-owned companies employed 3.5 million
Americans in 2010. Europe's economic health has a clear, direct and unparalleled impact on America's
economy and American jobs.
The danger posed by Europe's crisis to American interests is not solely economic. Even before the
euro crisis, our European allies were contributing less and less to sustaining the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, with the U.S. share of the costs rising to 70.5% in 2011, up from 63.6% in 2000. The crisis
is sure to put further downward pressure on European defense spending. NATO was wholly
unsuccessful in addressing this problem at its May summit.
The real-world consequences were apparent during NATO's operations in Libya last year , when
some allies nearly ran out of precision bombs. Looking ahead, though NATO members have formally
committed to supporting Afghanistan's government as most foreign military forces withdraw, their
ability to do so is increasingly in question.
More broadly, a Europe compelled to focus inward to preserve the euro and the EUalready topics of
heated debate within and among European nationswill be less capable of leading globally. It will also

have trouble serving as an essential partner to the U.S. This challenge will exist at the EU, NATO,
and individual-country levels; all will be preoccupied.
Tellingly, when France's new president, Franois Hollande, declared last May that "it is not possible to
allow Bashar Assad to massacre his own people," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle promptly
retorted that "there is no cause for speculation over military options." The message from Berlin was clear:
A European-led military intervention in Syria will remain off the agenda. These are not new divisions, but
they seem set to widen.
In this environment, U.S. leadership is simultaneously harder and more important. The Obama
administration's approach to Libyawaiting for and then hiding behind France and the United Kingdom
simply will not work in dealing with current challenges and those that may emerge in the next three to
five years.
Historically, only the U.S. and Europe have had the ability to mobilize sufficiently broad
international support to address major problems. Today, without leadership by one, the other or
both, issues like Iran's nuclear ambitions and Syria's civil war will fester. This in turn will do more
harm to U.S. interests and to regional and international securitynot to mention our shared values.
Unfortunately, President Obama seems to be handling the euro crisis in the same manner that his
administration dealt with Libya and so many other major issues. Asked about the impact of Europe's
troubles on the U.S. at the G-20 summit in Mexico, the president acknowledged the danger to the
American economy but failed to report any action other than financial and regulatory reforms that do little
to reduce the risk to the U.S.and then called on the Congress to pass his domestic jobs bill.
Of course, only Europe can ultimately solve its crisis, and the U.S. must concentrate its resources at
home. But we have too much at stake to sit on the sidelines.
One bold policy option would be to conclude a trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement between the U.S.
and Europe, something the EU has already welcomed in principle. Mr. Obama has called for greater
trade with Europe, but his administration has pursued a free-trade agreement without a sense of
urgency or clear leadership from the top.
An immediate and vocal commitment to free trade with Europefollowed by prompt action to make it
happenwould send a powerful signal of America's enduring confidence in its closest and deepest
economic relationship. While not a panacea, reducing the costs of trans-Atlantic trade can contribute
importantly over the longer term to creating new jobs and fueling sustained economic growth on both
sides of the ocean. This is sure to strengthen American and European leadership for decades to come.
US hegemonic decline leads to multiple scenarios for nuclear war

Brooks, Dartmouth College Government Professor, et al., 13
[Stephen G, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Ikenberry, William C G. Albert G.
Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence
Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, G. Wohlforth, William C., Daniel Webster Professor of
Government at Dartmouth College, Foreign Affairs, Lean Forward, Jan/Feb 2013, Vol. 92, Issue 1,
Academic Search Complete, accessed 6/28/14, AC]

KEEPING THE PEACE

Of course, even if it is true that the costs of deep engagement fall far below what advocates of
retrenchment claim, they would not be worth bearing unless they yielded greater benefits. In fact, they do.
The most obvious benefit of the current strategy is that it reduces the risk of a dangerous conflict.
The United States' security commitments deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from
contemplating expansion and dissuade U.S. partners from trying to solve security problems on their
own in ways that would end up threatening other states.
Skeptics discount this benefit by arguing that U.S. security guarantees aren't necessary to prevent
dangerous rivalries from erupting. They maintain that the high costs of territorial conquest and the
many tools countries can use to signal their benign intentions are enough to prevent conflict. In
other words, major powers could peacefully manage regional multipolarity without the American
pacifier.
But that outlook is too sanguine. If Washington got out of East Asia, Japan and South Korea would
likely expand their military capabilities and go nuclear, which could provoke a destabilizing
reaction from China. It's worth noting that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan tried
to obtain nuclear weapons; the only thing that stopped them was the United States, which used its
security commitments to restrain their nuclear temptations. Similarly, were the United States to
leave the Middle East, the countries currently backed by Washington--notably, Israel, Egypt, and
Saudi Arabia--might act in ways that would intensify the region's security dilemmas.
There would even be reason to worry about Europe. Although it's hard to imagine the return of
great-power military competition in a post-American Europe, it's not difficult to foresee
governments there refusing to pay the budgetary costs of higher military outlays and the political
costs of increasing EU defense cooperation. The result might be a continent incapable of securing
itself from threats on its periphery, unable to join foreign interventions on which U.S. leaders might
want European help, and vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers.
Given how easily a U.S. withdrawal from key regions could lead to dangerous competition,
advocates of retrenchment tend to put forth another argument: that such rivalries wouldn't
actually hurt the United States. To be sure, few doubt that the United States could survive the return
of conflict among powers in Asia or the Middle East--but at what cost? Were states in one or both of
these regions to start competing against one another, they would likely boost their military budgets,
arm client states, and perhaps even start regional proxy wars, all of which should concern the
United States, in part because its lead in military capabilities would narrow. Greater regional
insecurity could also produce cascades of nuclear proliferation as powers such as Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan built nuclear forces of their own. Those countries'
regional competitors might then also seek nuclear arsenals. Although nuclear deterrence can
promote stability between two states with the kinds of nuclear forces that the Soviet Union and the
United States possessed, things get shakier when there are multiple nuclear rivals with less robust
arsenals. As the number of nuclear powers increases, the probability of illicit transfers, irrational
decisions, accidents, and unforeseen crises goes up.

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 14 1

Brovero & Lundeen Politics Core

Gonzaga Debate Institute 14 2

Where can I find link turns?

What is the impact scenario?

Gonzaga Debate Institute 14 3

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B. Link Plan hurts Obama because *INSERT LINK

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2. Terrorist retaliation causes nuclear war draws in Russia and China

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NSA Reform Uniqueness

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NSA Reform Will Pass Momentum

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Will Pass Strict Reform Unpopular

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Top of the Docket

Its crunch time for reining in the National Security Agency.

Gonzaga Debate Institute 14 18

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NSA reform is top of the docket and has executive support

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Will Pass Obama Negotiations

Gonzaga Debate Institute 14 21

Obama political capital is creating bipartisan opposition to the senate bill

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Obama is negotiating with Senate for a House version of the bill

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Political Capital Key

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Not guaranteed passage continued push is key to preventing over reform

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Obama is pushing to maintain some metadata program but strong opposition

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Political Capital Key to Goldilocks

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NSA Key to Solve Terrorism

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Data collection is specifically key to immediate action against terror attacks

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Data collecting is key to counter terrorism only method

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