THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2010


KLMNO THE FED PAGE The Cable FOREIGN POLICY’S JOSH ROGIN 6Highlights from thecable.foreignpolicy.com


Palin makes exception for military spending


Sarah Palin is waging a battle inside the “tea party” movement to exempt defense spending from the group’s small-government, anti-deficit fervor. There’s growing concern among Republicans — and especially among the pro-defense neoconservative wing of the party —that national security spending, which is under a level of scrutiny and pressure not seen since the end of the Cold War, could fall victim to the tea party’s anti-establishment, anti- spending agenda. The former Alaska governor, as the unofficial leader of the movement and its most prominent celebrity, is moving to carve out such funding from any drives to cut overall government expenditures. “In the conservative ranks and within the party, she’s really quite a crucial piece in this puzzle,” said Tom Donnelly, a defense fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “She’s got both political and tea-party/ small-government bona fides, but she also has a lot of credibility in advocating for


military strength.” Palin’s drive to lead the charge against defense cuts was on display in a June 27 speech at “Freedom Fest,” a conservative gathering in Norfolk where she sent a clear message to Republicans that deficit reduction can’t come at the military’s expense. “Something has to be done


urgently to stop the out-of- control Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending machine, and no government agency should be immune from budget scrutiny,” she said. “We must make sure, however, that we do nothing to undermine the effectiveness of


our military. If we lose wars, if we lose the ability to deter adversaries, if we lose the ability to provide security for ourselves and for our allies, we risk losing all that makes America great. That is a price we cannot afford to pay.” Palin also took on Defense


Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican, challenging his drive to rein in procurement spending and reevaluate the need for certain huge weapons systems. “Secretary Gates recently spoke about the future of the U.S. Navy. He said we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers.He went on to ask, ‘Do we really need . . . more strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?’ ” Palin said. “Well, my answer is pretty


Sarah Palin is fighting an effort to control military spending.


issuing passport cards, which Americans can use as a cheaper alternative to passports, and border crossing cards, which are used by Mexican nationals who cross the border regularly. But the Government Accountability Office said in a report released last Thursday that “State does not fully understand the security and durability of the [U.S. passport] card.” Although the department “generally” is following accepted standards and procedures for designing the passport cards, it didn’t test the final version — leaving opportunities for forgery. The Department of Homeland


Security’s Customs and Border Protection bureau intercepted more than 13,000 fraudulent border crossing cards in 2009. Last July, one month after the cards became mandatory, the DHS’s Forensic Document Laboratory informed border patrol officers that counterfeits were appearing at U.S. ports of entry and issued an alert about how to detect fakes. The lab, which specializes in


travel-document fraud, told the GAO that State should use a different material and a higher standard of engraving to make the cards, and put more visible security features on them. Department officials said they


don’t think the benefits would be worth the expense.


simple: Yes, we can and yes, we do, because we must.”


Border cards could be counterfeited The State Department is issuing cards for crossing the U.S.-Mexico border that may be vulnerable to counterfeiting, according to a new report. In 2008, the department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs took over from the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service the job of producing and


Clinton aide at State plans to move on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s director of speechwriting, Lissa Muscatine, will be leaving the State Department, she tells the Cable in an interview. Muscatine, who runs the shop of scribes who put words in Clinton’s mouth every day, is stepping down to pursue her own writing, teaching and speaking opportunities, she said. She has worked for both Clintons off and on since 1993.


THE INFLUENCE INDUSTRY Dan Eggen


wo interest groups plan to spend as much as $15mil- lion this year on a nation- wide campaign in favor of new public-financing legislation aimed at limiting the influence of wealthy donors and large corpo- rations in congressional races. Common Cause and Public Campaign are making the push on behalf of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would allow law- makers to qualify for public matching funds by raising money exclusively from small donors. On Thursday, the two groups plan to unveil details about the campaign, which will in- clude TV ads targeting wa- vering law- makers and grass-roots ef- forts in 24 states. Former


congressman Bob Edgar (D- Pa.), now the chief executive of Common Cause, said public dis- gust over lobbying and campaign donations from Wall Street fi- nanciers, oil barons and other wealthy players provides a clear opportunity for reform. “This is really a critical mo-


BOB EDGAR


ment,” Edgar said in an interview. “The general public is well aware of the fact that money influences every aspect of politics, and they want something done about it. . . . If we miss this moment, it may be a while before we get back to it.”


The Fair Elections Now Act, sponsored in the House by Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.) and Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and in the Senate by Richard J. Dur- bin (D-Ill.), would establish a vol- untary system in which candi- dates would agree to accept only donations of $100 or less from contributors in their districts or states. After meeting a minimum amount of qualified contribu- tions, they would get $400 in matching funds for every $100


Groups say time is now for public financing push T


raised. The two bills differ slightly in their funding mechanisms: The House bill would generate funds through a fee on auctions of un- used portions of the broadcast spectrum, and the Senate bill would rely on a fee paid by large federal contractors based on how much government business they have.


Supporters say they hope to get


a House floor vote on the legisla- tion this summer, with timing less certain in the Senate. Edgar and others say their chances are improved by separate legislation now under consideration in the Senate aimed at countering a Su- preme Court decision allowing unlimited spending by corpora- tions, unions and nonprofit groups on political ads. “The public wants to see as much reform as Congress is will- ing to do,” said David Donnelly, who is managing the groups’ campaign. “The stronger the re- form, the more public support you’ll get.”


Donnelly points to polling and messaging research done by McKinnon Media and Westen Strategies, which found over- whelming support for pro-reform messages. They included a call to replace “corporate-funded elec- tions with fair elections” and to “put elections back in the hands of ordinary Americans.” The pro-reform groups say that


they have 157 co-sponsors in the House — including three Repub- licans — but that they have sever- al dozen more close to endorsing it. The groups’ national campaign will kick off this week with ads targeting eight wavering law- makers in Washington state, Colorado and Florida. (By the way, Donnelly claims it is the first


Federal Diary


If you are a federal employee and in financial trouble, your job could be at risk. Story, B3


political spot produced on an Ap- ple iPad.) Critics say the legislation has


little chance of passing this year, in part because a similar law gov- erning local races in Arizona is under scrutiny by the Supreme Court. Supporters of the Fair Elections Now legislation say their proposal does not include the same kind of provision under attack in Arizona. But Jeff Patch, communica- tions director for the Center for Competitive Politics, which op- poses many campaign-finance re- strictions, said the proposal has other serious flaws, including a reliance on public money. Patch points to the current public-fi- nancing system for presidential elections, which most experts agree is faltering. He also high- lighted a recent report from the Government Accountability Of- fice that said it was not clear whether public-financing pro- grams in Arizona and Maine had much benefit. “We think a system where peo- ple support people they believe in rather than using taxpayer funds is the way to go,” he said.


J Street eyes $1 million Just in time for this week’s


Washington visit by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the J Street activist group an- nounced that its political action committee has raised more mon- ey so far in this cycle than it did during the 2008 election. J Street, which formed as a lib-


eral counterpoint to more conser- vative Jewish political groups, says it has distributed more than $650,000 to 61 candidate this year and is on pace to surpass $1 million by November. JStreetPAC was ranked as the


largest pro-Israel PAC in 2008, ac- cording to contribution records. Washington’s most powerful pro- Israel lobbying group, the Amer- ican Israel Public Affairs Com- mittee (AIPAC), does not have a PAC, despite its acronym. eggend@washpost.com


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