Politics

New Low in Relations Between Obama, Congressional GOP

Published

9 years ago

March 11, 2015

In this March 3, 2015, file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he speaks before a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

JULIE PACE, Associated Press
ERICA WERNER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Relations between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans have hit a new low.

There has been little direct communication between Obama and the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill since Republicans took full control of Congress in January. Obama has threatened to veto more than a dozen Republican-backed bills. And House Speaker John Boehner infuriated the White House by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress without consulting the administration first.

But the dispute over Obama’s high-stakes nuclear negotiations with Iran has put the relationship perhaps beyond repair.

The president and his advisers are seething over Republican efforts to undermine the sensitive discussions with Iran, most recently by sending an “open letter” to the country’s leaders warning that any nuclear deal could expire the day Obama walks out of the Oval Office. “I cannot recall another instance in which senators wrote directly to advise another country — much less a longtime foreign adversary — that the president does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them,” Vice President Joe Biden, who spent nearly four decades in the Senate, said in an unusually harsh statement.

For their part, Republican lawmakers call their outreach to a hostile nation a reasonable response to an administration they say has spurned Congress and ignored its prerogatives at every turn. It’s the starkest sign yet that Republicans see an adversary, not a potential partner, in Obama’s White House — even on foreign policy issues where partisan differences have traditionally been somewhat muted.

“The mutual efforts to work together under this administration have just disappeared, so I think there’s a sense now that extraordinary things occasionally need to happen to be sure that the president understands how strongly the Congress feels,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

The dismal state of the relationship has largely sunk the slim prospects for bipartisan cooperation in Obama’s final two years in office, with one exception being work on international trade agreements that the White House and Republicans have long supported. And with Obama firmly eying his legacy, even his own advisers have conceded that a president who took office vowing to bridge partisan divides is virtually powerless to influence his political opponents.

“We don’t have the ability to communicate with them,” Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s recently departed senior adviser, said in an interview with New York magazine. “They are talking to people who agree with them, they are listening to news outlets that reinforce that point of view, and the president is probably the person with the least ability to break into that because of the partisan bias there.”

Not surprisingly, each side blames the other for letting things get so bad.

To hear Republicans tell it, Obama has eroded their trust by going around Congress time and again with executive actions, particularly on health care and immigration, where he took steps as far back as 2012 to extend deportation stays and work permits to hundreds of thousands of younger immigrants in this country illegally.

Instead of easing up on the strategy after Democrats took a beating in the November midterm elections, Obama doubled down with a raft of new immigration directives affecting millions more immigrants.

At the same time, Republicans complain he has made few overtures to work with them since the election. The president and GOP leaders last met face-to-face on Jan. 13 during a meeting at the White House, and Boehner and Obama have not spoken since a phone call later that month. There has been scant contact between the president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and a so-called “bourbon summit” that the president and majority leader had lightheartedly talked about arranging is on neither party’s calendar.

“They don’t want to work with us, they don’t want to do anything with us,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “I mean, come on. I can’t imagine Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or George Herbert Walker Bush doing some of the things that they’re doing that make all of these things more difficult.”

The White House and Democrats blame Republicans, arguing they can’t find a way to compromise because of the outsize sway held by the most conservative, tea party-backed elements of the party. Boehner has had repeated difficulties controlling this group of lawmakers, finally passing a bill to fund the Homeland Security Department last week only with Democratic help. Democrats increasingly question whether Republicans treat Obama’s administration with the deference due to the presidency. The Iran letter was the most visible example, but some Democrats also chafed when McConnell penned an opinion piece urging states to ignore Obama administration climate rules.

The dynamic of a lame-duck president clashing with Congress on his way out of the door is not a new one. President George W. Bush struggled over Iraq troop levels and pushed unsuccessfully to pass an immigration bill. President Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings.

Republicans and White House officials agree they must find some way to get along well enough in coming months to perform the basic functions of government, such as raising the borrowing limit and extending the highway trust fund. Aside from potentially trade, there is little hope of bigger deals on taxes or anything else.

Yet even after a government shutdown and years of intense disputes over spending, health care and immigration, White House officials see Republicans’ aggressive efforts to insert themselves in the Iran negotiations as the opening of a new front in the fight between the parties.

“It certainly represents a new area that has previously been protected from such outright partisanship,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “They’ve clearly moved into new territory.”

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Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

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Bay Area

MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

Published

5 days ago

April 20, 2024

Oakland Post

Mayor London Breed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Contact: Mayor’s Office of Communications, mayorspressoffice@sfgov.org

***PRESS RELEASE***

MAYOR BREED ANNOUNCES $53 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT FOR SAN FRANCISCO’S HOMELESS PROGRAMS

HUD’s Continuum of Care grant will support the City’s range of critical services and programs, including permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and improved access to housing for survivors of domestic violence

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed today announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded the city a $53.7 million grant to support efforts to renew and expand critical services and housing for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

HUD’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program is designed to support local programs with the goal of ending homelessness for individuals, families, and Transitional Age Youth.

This funding supports the city’s ongoing efforts that have helped more than 15,000 people exit homelessness since 2018 through City programs including direct housing placements and relocation assistance. During that time San Francisco has also increased housing slots by 50%. San Francisco has the most permanent supportive housing of any county in the Bay Area, and the second most slots per capita than any city in the country.

“In San Francisco, we have worked aggressively to increase housing, shelter, and services for people experiencing homelessness, and we are building on these efforts every day,” said Mayor London Breed. “Every day our encampment outreach workers are going out to bring people indoors and our City workers are connecting people to housing and shelter. This support from the federal government is critical and will allow us to serve people in need and address encampments in our neighborhoods.”

The funding towards supporting the renewal projects in San Francisco include financial support for a mix of permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and transitional housing projects. In addition, the CoC award will support Coordinated Entry projects to centralize the City’s various efforts to address homelessness. This includes $2.1 million in funding for the Coordinated Entry system to improve access to housing for youth and survivors of domestic violence.

“This is a good day for San Francisco,” said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. “HUD’s Continuum of Care funding provides vital resources to a diversity of programs and projects that have helped people to stabilize in our community. This funding is a testament to our work and the work of our nonprofit partners.”

The 2024 Continuum of Care Renewal Awards Include:

$42.2 million for 29 renewal PSH projects that serve chronically homeless, veterans, and youth
$318,000 for one new PSH project, which will provide 98 affordable homes for low-income seniors in the Richmond District
$445,00 for one Transitional Housing (TH) project serving youth
$6.4 million dedicated to four Rapid Rehousing (RRH) projects that serve families, youth, and survivors of domestic violence
$750,00 for two Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) projects
$2.1 million for three Coordinated Entry projects that serve families, youth, chronically homeless, and survivors of domestic violence

In addition, the 2023 CoC Planning Grant, now increased to $1,500,000 from $1,250,000, was also approved. Planning grants are submitted non-competitively and may be used to carry out the duties of operating a CoC, such as system evaluation and planning, monitoring, project and system performance improvement, providing trainings, partner collaborations, and conducting the PIT Count.

“We are very appreciative of HUD’s support in fulfilling our funding request for these critically important projects for San Francisco that help so many people trying to exit homelessness,” said Del Seymour, co-chair of the Local Homeless Coordinating Board. “This funding will make a real difference to people seeking services and support in their journey out of homelessness.”

In comparison to last year’s competition, this represents a $770,000 increase in funding, due to a new PSH project that was funded, an increase in some unit type Fair Market Rents (FMRs) and the larger CoC Planning Grant. In a year where more projects had to compete nationally against other communities, this represents a significant increase.

Nationally, HUD awarded nearly $3.16 billion for over 7,000 local homeless housing and service programs including new projects and renewals across the United States.

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Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 17 – 23, 2024

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6 days ago

April 19, 2024

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Barbara Lee

Congresswoman Barbara Lee Issues Statement on Deaths of Humanitarian Aid Volunteers in Gaza 

On April 2, a day after an Israeli airstrike erroneously killed seven employees of World Central Kitchen (WCK), a humanitarian organization delivering aid in the Gaza Strip, a statement was release by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-12). “This is a devastating and avoidable tragedy. My prayers go to the families and loved ones of the selfless members of the World Central Kitchen team whose lives were lost,” said Lee.

Published

1 week ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Congresswoman Barbara Lee

By California Black Media

“This is a devastating and avoidable tragedy. My prayers go to the families and loved ones of the selfless members of the World Central Kitchen team whose lives were lost,” said Lee.

The same day, it was confirmed by the organization that the humanitarian aid volunteers were killed in a strike carried out by Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Prior to the incident, members of the team had been travelling in two armored vehicles marked with the WCF logo and they had been coordinating their movements with the IDF. The group had successfully delivered 10 tons of humanitarian food in a deconflicted zone when its convoy was struck.

“This is not only an attack against WCK. This is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the direst situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” said Erin Gore, chief executive officer of World Central Kitchen.

The seven victims included a U.S. citizen as well as others from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Palestine.

Lee has been a vocal advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza and has supported actions by President Joe Biden to airdrop humanitarian aid in the area.

“Far too many civilians have lost their lives as a result of Benjamin Netanyahu’s reprehensible military offensive. The U.S. must join with our allies and demand an immediate, permanent ceasefire – it’s long overdue,” Lee said.