Politics Core - Affirmative - UTNIF 2013

AFF Politics Core
UTNIF 2013
UTNIF Politics CoreAFF
University of Texas National Institute in Forensics
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Politics Link Answers
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***Top Level***
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AFF Politics Core PC Not Key 2 Immigration
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PCs not key to immigration Hirsh 2/7 Michael, chief correspondent for National Journal, previously served as the senior editor and national
economics correspondent for Newsweek, has appeared many times as a commentator on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio, has written for the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Harpers, and Washington Monthly, and authored two books, "There's No Such Thing as Political Capital", 2013, www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207 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
influence his 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.
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AFF Politics Core PC Not Key/Winners Win
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Political capital isnt key---unforseen events easily change the political calculus---specifically true in the context of immigration---and,winners win Hirsch 2/7 Michael Hirsch is a chief correspondent for the National Journal, 2013, Theres No Such Thing as Political
Capital http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207 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 capi talsome sense of an electoral mandate to
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
do somethingis very rare. It almost never happens. In 1964, maybe. And to some degree in 1980. For that reason, him? Obama has neither at present. And unless a surge in the economy at 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 pseudo-concept 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 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.
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AFF Politics Core 1arBush Doesnt Prove
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Bush doesnt prove PCs real Hirsch 2/7 Michael Hirsch is a chief correspondent for the National Journal, 2013, Theres No Such Thing as Political
Capital http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207 Bush failed utterly, of course. But the problem was not that he didnt have enough political capital. Yes, he may have overestimated his standing. Bushs margin over John Kerry was thinhelped along by a bumbling Kerry campaign that was almost the mirror image of Romneys gaffe-filled failure this timebut that was not the real mistake. The problem was that whatever credibility or stature Bush thought he had earned as a newly reelected president did nothing to make Social Security privatization a better idea in most peoples eyes. Voters didnt trust the plan, and four years later, at the end of Bushs term, the stock-market collapse bore out the publics skepticism. Privatization just didnt have any momentum behind it, no matter who was pushing it or how much capital Bush spent to sell it.
The mistake that Bush made with Social Security, says John Sides, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University and a well-followed political blogger, was that
just because he won an election, he thought he had a green light. But there was no sense of any kind of public urgency on Social Security reform. Its like he went into the garage where various Republican policy ideas were hanging up and picked one. I dont think Obamas going to make that mistake. Bush decided he wanted to push a rock up a hill. He didnt understand how steep the hill was. I think Obama has more momentum on his side because of the Republican Partys concerns about the Latino vote and the shooting at Newtown. Obama may also get his way on the debt ceiling, not because of his reelection, Sides
says, but because Republicans are beginning to doubt whether taking a hard line on fiscal policy is a good idea, as the par ty suffers in the polls.
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AFF Politics Core 1arWinners Win
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Empirics prove winners win---LBJ Hirsch 2/7 Michael Hirsch is a chief correspondent for the National Journal, 2013, Theres No Such Thing as Political
Capital http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207
ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ Sometimes, a
clever practitioner of power can get more done just because hes aggressive and knows the hallways of Congress well. Texas A&Ms Edwards is right to say that the outcome of the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnsons landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, was one of the few that conveyed a mandate. But one of the main reasons for that mandate (in addition to Goldwaters ineptitude as a candidate) was President Johnsons masterful use of power leading up to that election, and his ability to get far more done than anyone thought possible, given his limited political capital. In the newest volume in his exhaustive study of LBJ, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro recalls Johnson getting cautionary advice after he assumed the presidency from the assassinated John F. Kennedy in late 1963. Dont focus on a long-stalled civilrights bill, advisers told him, because it might jeopardize Southern lawmakers support for a tax cut and appropriations bills the president needed. One of the wise, practical people around the table [said that] the presidency has only a certain amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtnt to expend it on this, Caro writes. (Coinage, of course, was what political capital was called in those days.) Johnson replied, Well, what the hells the presidency for? Johnson didnt worry about coinage, and he got the Civil Rights Act enacted, along with much else: Medicare, a tax cut, antipoverty programs. He appeared to understand not just the ways of Congress but also the way to maximize the momentum he possessed in the lingering mood of national grief and determination by picking the right issues, as Caro records. Momentum is not a mysterious mistress, LBJ said. It is a controllable fact of political life. Johnson had the skill and wherewithal to realize that, at that moment of history, he could have unlimited coinage if he handled the politics right. He did. (At least until Vietnam, that is.)
Action key to Obamas agendaPlan distracts from the scandals draining his political capital
Washington Times June 12th [2013 Sensational season for scandal Thats a big problem for Mr. Obama. The more time that passes, the less political capital hell have to muscle through his priorities. Unless he acts quickly, he could lose his chance to make his presidency truly historic. He needs more accomplishments to distinguish himself. More practically, the media abhors a vacuum, and thats what persistent inaction is creating. Reporters have no choice but to fill their news holes. As a result, minor kerfuffles and governmental failures, which would otherwise be relegated to the second tier, become frontpage news for lack of competition. Scandals blossom in the absence of a serious agenda. Thats one reason the Obama administration has been battered by the terrible trifecta of the
snatching of reporters telephone logs, the continuing suspicions about the attacks in Benghazi and, most importantly, the ta rgeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service. The recent news that the government has compelled telephone and Internet companies to fork over information about average citizens has also raised concerns because of the dearth of impactful actions otherwise in the nations capital. Distractions take center stage when the main acts dont show up.
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***Link Uniqueness*
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AFF Politics Core Climate Thumper

Obama spending political capital on climate
The Guardian June 25th [2013 Obama and climate change: fresh air
There is no doubting that, for today, Mr Obama is not
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only leveraging the power of his office. He is also investing his political capital into the cause of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This and immigration will be the defining domestic reforms of his second term. No cause could better merit this effort. With the US and China, the world's biggest emitters, making tangible efforts, no bigger signal could now be sent to the rest of the world .
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AFF Politics Core Employer Mandate
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Employer mandate delay undermines Obama credibility on immigration reform and debt ceiling
HotAir July 5th [2013 ObamaCare delay undermines entire White House agenda http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/05/obamacare-delay-undermines-entire-white-house-agenda/ ObamaCare delay undermines entire White House agenda
The White House wants to spin the delay in enforcing the employer mandate of ObamaCare as evidence that theyre listening to Americans and the business sector and attempting to be flexible on implementation. Rich Lowry isnt buying it. In an essay yesterday for Politico, Lowry explains that the delay comes from the incompetence of the White House more than three years after pushing an unworkable bill through Congress, combined with its clear intention to manipulate the law for its own political benefit: The administration can call it whatever it wants, but there is no hiding the embarrassment of a climbdown on a high-profile feature of President Barack Obamas signature initiative although the administration seemed determined to do all it could to hide it. If Bloomberg hadnt broken the news on Tuesday, the administration was apparently planning to announce it on July 3 only because the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve were too far off. The reason for the delay, were told, is incompetence. The administrations story is that it simply couldnt find a way to im plement the insurance reporting requirements on employers within the time frame set out in the law. In this telling, the mandate was merely collateral damage it had to be put off, along with the accompanying $2,000-per-employee fine on firms with more than 50 employees who dont offer health coverage. This just happens to be the mandate that is causing howls of pain from businesses and creating perverse incentives for them to limit their hiring or to hire part- rather than full-time employees. And it just happens that 2015 the new target year for implementation is after a midterm election year rather during one. It must all be a lucky break. Obamacare was sold on two flagrantly false promises: that you could keep the insurance you have and that prices for insurance would drop. But employers will dump significant numbers of employees onto the exchanges to save on their own health-care costs. And the latest indication of the laws price shock came via The Wall Street Journal this week, which reported, healthy consumers could see insurance rates double or even triple when they look for individual coverage. That demonstrates the underlying incompetence of the ObamaCare project, from start to finish. It promises something that it n ot only couldnt deliver, but made all but impossible from its very existence. On top of that, it created a huge top-down bureaucracy that makes everything more costly for all participants in the system government, providers, insurers, employers, and consumers. That also increased the likelihood of incompetence, capriciousness, and failure, which is a large part of the reason that the employer mandate had to be delayed the other part being the approaching 2014 midterm election cycle, of cou rse.
This creates a bigger headache for Obama and his administration than merely the Affordable Care Act rollout, though. They face two big policy debates in the coming months immigration reform in the House, and the budget and debt ceiling in both chambers of Congress. By declaring the right to arbitrarily ignore statutory law and defy Congress in this matter, just how is Congress supposed to negotiate with the administration on anything else? Allahpundit blogged about the impact on border-security statutes earlier this week, butConn Carroll and Mickey Kaus point out another component in the comprehensive bill that might be even more vulnerable to Obama administration capriciousness :
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AFF Politics Core No Political Capital

Obamas agenda is crashing and burning
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Newsday July 5th [2013 O'Reilly: Something needs to go right for Barack Obama http://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/william-f-b-o-reilly/o-reilly-something-needs-to-go-right-for-barackobama-1.5632691
There cannot be a crisis next week," Henry Kissinger oncequipped, "my schedule is already full." It's a line President Barack Obama ought to borrow right about now. This hasn't been a good week for the nation's 44th president. The one before it wasn't so hot either, nor was the one before that. Come to think of it, Obama
hasn't had a really good week since being re-elected last November. It's hard to know where to begin: Implementing Obamacare is proving to be the train wreck Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) warned it would be; our clumsy efforts to snag catch-me-if-you-can 29-year-old Edward Snowden are causing international incidents from Beijing to Moscow to Sucre; secularists in Egypt -- who should love America -- are furious at the administration for having backed the just-overthrown democratically elected Sunni extremist regime; the president's "redline" over the use of chemical weapons in Syria was crossed, yet the president is hamstrung on what he can do about it; and, noting that, Iran is moving ever closer to realizing nuclear weapons and regional hegemony. The IRS and reporter hacking scandals also continue to fester, and the unemployment rate isn't budging at 7.6 percent. Have I forgotten anything -- other than what Snowden actually revealed about the NSA, Benghazi, stalled immigration reform and the debt ceiling fight coming in September?
Probably. I realize I'm piling on. But not inaccurately. President Obama's
second term is having real problems. Events are overtaking his capacity to lead, leaving his administration desperately needing to demonstrate competence -- at anything.
Obama is wasting his political capitalHe has no persuasive power

The Washington Post June 28th [2013 The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies by Jonathan Alter Perhaps the most interesting revelations come in Cha pter 10, Missing the Schmooze Gene, in which Alter succeeds better than any other writer to date in making sense of the paradox that has come to define Obama: a political figure who loves the real work but becomes impatient with the trivial duties of modern-day political office, where schmoozing, fundraising, donor maintenance and false friendships are the grist that keep the machine churning. Alter describes the president complaining to staffers during the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis as he
dutifully calls Democratic senators whom Majority Leader Harry Reid has placed on a list for special attention. Obama gripes: Why do these g uys need this? Are they so insecure that they can function only if they get to tell people, Hey, the president called me!? One senior aide explains, Its not in his DNA. According to friends,
Obama would rather exercise or spend time with Michelle and the girls than chit-chat with needy members of Congress. George H.W. Bush and other presidents were famous for dashing off personal notes of thanks to donors and political allies, but Obama has
generally rebuffed that practice. A former top adviser explained, He fundamentally doesnt relate to their impact because he wouldnt particularly care if he got one. Yet Obama daily pens handwritten letters to average citizens who write to him, believing this to be a valuable use of his time. In assessing this missing schmooze gene, Alter concludes that Obamas strong desire to be a normal person is a fine quality in an individual but problematic for a president. He concludes that Obama
has squandered a valuable piece of political capital: His failure to use the trappings of the presidency more
often left him with one less tool in his toolbox, one less way to leverage his authority.
SCANDALS ARE HURTING OBAMAS CREDIBILITY Young, 7/03/13 (J.t. Young conservative columnist and political commentator The Peril For President Obama In His Negative Polling Numbers. 7/03/2013.online.) [http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/07/03/the-peril-for-president-obama-in-his-negative-polling-numbers/]
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Recent scandals are driving President Obamas negative ratings perilously close to November 2010s . This deterioration is seen not just in the overall population, but even more pronouncedly in those with the most strongly held opinions. Without significant improvement in the variables influencing public opinion, Obama could be in for an even tougher upcoming midterm election than his first. According to Rasmussens daily tracking poll, four years ago on July 1, 2009, Obama had a nine percentage point positive overall job approval rating (54% to 45%). Over the last four years, problems have had a debilitating impact on Obamas poll numbers. The economy is still weak, unemployment still high, the budget deficit and federal spending both still well above historical averages, and Obamacare continues unpopular. As a result, on May 11 this year the day three scandal stories (about the Benghazi attack, IRS targeting of political groups, and HHS solicitation of private firms to help fund Obamacare implementation) dominated news coverage, but had not yet shaped public opinion Obama had just a three percentage point positive overall job approval rating (51% to 48%).
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***Cuba***
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AFF Politics Core Link Turn/Shield
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A forceful Obama solves any risk of backlashclaims of the Cuba Lobbys influence are all hype Leogrande 4/11 William M. Leogrande, professor in the department of government at American University's School
of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., 2013, The Cuba Lobby The most powerful lobby in Washington isn't the NRA. It's the Castro-hating right wing that has Obama's bureaucrats terrified and inert, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/11/the_cuba_lobby_jay_z?page=0,0 The irrationality of U.S. policy does not stem just from concerns about electoral politics in Florida. The Cuban-American community has evolved to the point that a majority now favors engagement with Cuba, as both opinion polls and Obama's electoral success in 2008 and 2012 demonstrate. Today, the larger problem is the climate of fear in the government bureaucracy, where even honest
reporting about Cuba -- let alone advocating a more sensible policy -- can endanger one's career. Democratic presidents, who ought to know better, have tolerated this distortion of the policy process and at times have reinforced it by allowing the Cuba lobby to extort concessions from them. But the cost is high -- the gradual and insidious erosion of the government's ability to make sound policy based on fact rather than fantasy.
Through bullying and character assassination, the China Lobby blocked a sensible U.S. policy toward Beijing for a quartercentury, with tragic results. When Richard Nixon finally defied the China Lobby by going to Beijing in 1972, the earth did not tremble, civilization did not collapse, and U.S. security did not suffer. If anything, U.S. allies around the world applauded the adoption -- finally -- of a rational policy. At home, the punditocracy was surprised to discover that Nixon's bold stroke was politically popular. The China Lobby proved to be a paper tiger; the Red Scare fever of the 1950s had subsided, robbing the movement of its political base. Likewise, the Cuba Lobby has blocked a sensible policy toward Cuba for half a century, with growing damage to U.S. relations with Latin America. When a courageous U.S. president finally decides to defy the Cuba Lobby with a stroke as bold as Nixon's trip to China , she or he will discover that so too the Cuba Lobby no longer has the political clout it once had. The strategic importance of repairing the United States' frayed relations with Latin America has come to outweigh the political risk of reconciliation with Havana. Nixon went to China, and history records it as the highlight of his checkered legacy. Will Barack Obama have the courage to go to Havana?
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AFF Politics Core Public Link Turn
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Public supports engagement Angus-Reid, 12 (Angus-Reid polling, Most Americans Willing to Re-establish Ties with Cuba 2/6/12, http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/44366/mostamericans-willing-to-re-establish-ties-with-cuba/)
People in the United States are ready to change their countrys interaction with Cuba, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found. In the online survey of a representative national sample of 1,008 American adults, three-in-five respondents (62%) agree with the U.S. re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, while one-in-four (23%) disagree. Majorities of Independents (67%), Democrats (64%) and Republicans (56%) agree with re-instituting to bilateral ties. In March 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama eased travel restrictions to Cuba, and allowed U.S. citizens to travel to the island for religious and cultural reasons. Most Americans (57%) believe it is time to lift the travel ban that prevents most Americans from visiting the island. Half of Americans (51%) would lift the trade embargo with Cuba that has been in place since the 1960s, while three-in-ten (29%) disagree. Most Democrats (53%) and Independents (55%) support ending the embargo, but Republicans are not as convinced (46%).
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AFF Politics Core Leahy Supports
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Leahy supports removal Waterloo Region Record 13 [Another view: Cross Cuba Off the U.S. Blacklist, March 18th, Lexis Nexis] The
U.S. State Department says it has no plans to remove Cuba from the list. But Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, who recently led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Havana, is urging President Barack Obama to consider a range of policy changes toward Cuba, including delisting it, which would not require congressional approval. Designation as a state sponsor of terrorism carries heavy sanctions, including financial restrictions and a ban on defence exports and sales.
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AFF Politics Core No Link
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No perception Smith, professor at John Hopkins University 9 [Wayne, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in
Washington, D.C. where he directs its Cuba Program and Cuba analyst for the US government since 1957, An Opening to Cuba?, Jan 8th, http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/01/08/an-opening-to-cuba/] That being the case, their presence, then, is not a cause to keep Cuba on the list. Removing Cuba from the list can be accomplished without fanfare or policy statements. The State Department every spring prepares a report on the subject. In years past, those reports have concluded that Cuba should remain on the list, but have done so without any supporting evidence. This year, once the new leadership is in place in the State Department, it should give instructions to those preparing the report to come up with an honest conclusion. If there is no evidence that Cuba is involved in terrorist activities, the report should say so and recommend that it be removed from the list.
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AFF Politics Core No Lobby/K of Backlash
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The myth of political backlash is used to justify anti-Cuban policy the lobby is irrelevant Nahem, coordinator of Cuba Solidarity New York, 12 [Ike, Part I: The Myth of the Miami Lobby, June 22 ,
nd
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/06/washington-and-the-cuban-revolution-today-ballad-of-a-never-ending-policy-2/] This argument and explanation turns political reality on its head. It
has never been true and, in todays world, it has never been less credible. It is a myth and an illusion that the Cuban-American community and Cuban-American office-holding politicians are the driving, determining force behind US policies toward Cuba. US foreign policy in general, and Cuba policy in particular, is driven by the interests of the US ruling capitalist class of bosses, bankers, and bondholders. It is primarily mediated through its two political parties and state institutions and secondarily through its big-business media, think tanks, and academic minions. Cuban-American bourgeois politicians are part of that mix, prominent, but far from decisive. Washington has never, and does not
now, need the aging representatives of the ex-ruling powers of Cuba, or their descendants, to explain to them why they should oppose the Cuban Revolution and the
actual political affect of the Miami Lobby myth (which through endless repetition has become almost a mantra) is to take the political focus off the US government and place it on the Cuban-American community and a handful of Cuban-American elected officials. It puts the cart before the horse, the caboose at the head
domestic and international policies of the revolutionary socialist Cuban government. The of the train Such politicians of Cuban origin in the US Congress as Republican Florida representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, Democratic New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, and Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio can be useful as a cover or a foil for a US policy that is so unpopular. Cuban-Americans can be blamed and chided by those opposed to the policy and praised and defended by those in favor of the policy. But they do not make the policy. The
myth of the Miami Lobby cuts across building a broad protest movement and the kind of effective action that can actually force a change in the policy. By homogenizing (or worse, demonizing) the contradictory and increasingly polarized Cuban-American community, the myth of the Miami Lobby has become an obstacle to winning over more Cuban-Americans to oppose US sanctions.
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***Mexico***
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AFF Politics Core Energy Independence

Energy independence is bipartisan
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Kelly, 12 (Mike Kelly, Energy Acuity, Energy Policy's Impact on the 2012 Presidential Race 9/7/12, http://www.energyacuity.com/blog/bid/217770/EnergyPolicy-s-Impact-on-the-2012-Presidential-Race)
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 Mid -Atlantic. 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.
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AFF Politics Core No Obama

Senator Duncan/Committee push the plan
Trainor, 13 (Chris Trainor, Index Journal, Duncan pushes agreement forward 6/1/2013,
http://www.indexjournal.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=40&ArticleID=18917)
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Since being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Third District Rep. Jeff Duncan often talked about an "all of the above" approach to moving toward energy independence. The House Natural Resources Committee, of which Duncan is a member, recently approved an act that would implement an agreement that could serve as an example of such an approach. The committee approved in May a transboundary hydrocarbons agreement with Mexico. The bill H.R. 1613 - came out of the committee with bipartisan support. Duncan spokesman Allen Klump indicated the bill could come up for a vote in the House later this month. Formally known as the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act, H.R. 1613 would set into motion the terms of the U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement, which governs the development of oil and natural gas resources along the U.S.-Mexico maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico. The bill would lift a moratorium on drilling along the maritime border and provide access to an area thought to contain more than 170 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
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AFF Politics Core Bipartisanship

Aff is popular
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CNR, 13 (Committee on Natural Resources, House Committee Approves Legislation to Approve Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement with Mexico 5/15/13
http://naturalresources.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=334042)
Today we took another step towards embracing an all-of-the-above approach to energy that safely develops our natural resources to help achieve North American energy independence. This bipartisan bill will help lower energy costs while creating American jobs by safely opening up more than 1.5 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for exploration and production. This is a common sense approach to work with our partners south of the border to make both countries more energy secure, while protecting our sovereignty. This legislation works out the vast majority of differences with the Obama Administration, while also ensuring that those seeking to harvest these resources have the certainty they need to move forward. Im optimistic that this legislation will pass the House of Representatives, and continu e on its path towards becoming law, said Rep. Jeff Duncan (SC-03). Approval of this legislation by the Committee is important to finalizing this agreement and expanding American energy production. This bill would create jobs, lower energy prices by increasing our domestic supply, generate new federal revenue to help lower the debt and strengthen our economy, and make America more energy secure by opening up new areas in the Gulf of Mexico to exploration and development. In addition, this important legislation would lay the framework for transboundary agreements with other nations that will allow America to fully utilize its shared natural energy reserves. said Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (WA-04). The House Natural Resources Committee recently held an oversight hearing on H.R. 1613 where the Obama Administration and expert witnesses both voiced their support of the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act.
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***Venezuela***
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AFF Politics Core Link Non-Unique

Obama pursuing engagement now.
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REYES THEIS June 07, 2013 (US expected to use dialogue to boost opening with Venezuela http://english.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/130607/us-expected-to-use-dialogue-to-boost-opening-with-venezuela) Although the Venezuelan opposition expected Washington to take a hard-line stance vis--vis the Venezuelan Government, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elas Jaua on Wednesday and agreed on making all possible efforts to keep good diplomatic relations. Kenneth Ramrez, the president of the Venezuelan Council on Foreign Affairs (Covri), believes that this is "a new attempt of Barack Obama's Administration to implement an engagement policy towards Venezuela. They seek to use dialogue and
negotiation to attain political depolarization and discourage somehow Venezuela's pugnacious foreign policy, which represents an obstacle for the US policy on the region." He explained that the
US aims "to restore ambassador-level relations; reactivate counter-narcotics cooperation, which has been frozen since 2005; and likely to get cooperation on energy back on track, as it has been on hold since 2003." Ramrez reminded
that in 2010, Washington was bolstering an engagement policy towards Venezuela. Such efforts were derailed when designated US Ambassador to Venezuela, Larry Palmer made some statements about Venezuela before the US Congress. Upon Palmer's remarks, Caracas denied his placet, and Washington responded by revoking Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo lvarez's visa. According to the analyst, President Obama
understood that the confrontation policy has failed. "He is giving (dialogue) a second chance, as he believes that Venezuela and Nicols Maduro, considering President (Hugo) Chvez demise, the economic crisis and the narrow presidential vote, have no other choice but to change their policy and start an opening."
Obama committed to cooperation now.

Mark P. Sullivan April 9, 2013 (Specialist in Latin American Affairs April 9, 2013 Hugo Ch vezs Death: Implications for Venezuela and U.S. Relations Congressional Research Service) Despite tensions in relations, the Obama Administration maintains that it remains committed to seeking constructive engagement with Venezuela, focusing on such areas as anti-drug and counterterrorism efforts. In the aftermath of President
Ch vezs reelection in October 2012, the White House, while acknowledging differences with President Ch vez, congratulated the Venezuelan people on the high level of participation and the relatively peaceful election process. Subsequently, in November 2012, the
State Departments Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roberta Jacobson, engaged in a conversation with Vice President Maduro about improving bilateral relations, including greater cooperation on counternarcotics issues. In early January 2013, the State Department reiterated that the United States remained open to dialogue with Venezuela on a range of issues of mutual interest . In light of
the setback in President Ch vezs health, a State Department spokesman maintained on January 9, 2013, that regardless of what ha ppens politically in Venezuela, if the Venezuelan government and if the Venezuelan people want to move forward with us, we think th ere is a path thats possible.11 In response to President Ch vezs death, President Obama issued the following statement: At this challenging time of President Hugo Ch vezs passing, the Unit ed States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for hu man rights.12 While the Presidents statement did not offer traditional condolences, the State Department maintains that it expressed U.S. sympathy to Ch vezs family and to the Venezuelan people.13 Many Latin American and other foreign leaders have expressed their condolences to Venezuela on Ch vezs passing. The White House statement focused on the U.S. interest in getting cooperative bilateral relations back on track while at the same time reiterating that the United States is committed to promoting democratic practices and respect for human rights. A
number of other statements by Members of Congress also expressed hope for a new era in U.S.Venezuelan relations.
Link InevitableObama seeking cooperation over oil in the next 6 months

Jared Metzker Jun 17 2013 (Analysts Say Oil Could Help Mend U.S.-Venezuela Relations WASHINGTON, (IPS) - A shift in U.S. foreign policy towards Venezuela may be pending as a bilateral rapprochement suddenly appears more possible than it has in years. On the sidelines of talks held earlier this month in Guatemala by the Organisation of American States (OAS), U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry met with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua, with Kerrys subsequent statements indicating that relation s could be heading in a friendlier direction. We
agreed today both of us, Venezuela and the United States that we would like to see our countries find a
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new way forward, establish a more constructive and positive relationship and find the ways to do that, Kerry said following
the meeting with Jaua, which was reportedly requested by the Venezuelans. The meeting happened on the heels of the release of Timothy Tracy, a U.S. filmmaker whom Venezuela had been holding on accusations of espionage. His release was interpreted by many a s an olive branch being offered by the new Venezuelan government of Nicholas Maduro, whose presidency Washington still has not formally recognised. Only
months ago, before the death of Venezuelas long-time socialist leader Hugo Chavez, any normalisation of relations between Venezuela and the United States seemed highly unlikely. In 2002, Chavez was briefly removed from power by a military coup dtat that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had known was
imminent. Chavez immediately accused the United States of having played a part in the event. After his suspicions were confirmed partly valid, his rhetoric grew more scathing. In 2006, he famously told the United Nations General Assembly that then-U.S. President George W. Bush was the devil himself. Following Chavezs death from cancer in March, however, his hand-picked successor, Maduro, the former vice-president, has not been as vitriolic in his posturing vis--vis the United States. According to Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, Maduro has offered conflicting signals. Maduro has so far shifted in his position toward the U.S. between a moderate approach and a more hard-line one, Shifter told IPS. "Venezuela cannot confront its economic c risis and the United States at the same time." -- Diana Villiers Negroponte The new presidents waffling may be a reflection of his tenuous grip on power. By many accounts, Maduro lacks the political prowess and rabble-rousing charm of Chavez, who enjoyed military backing as well as fervent support from the lower classes. In addition to a strong anti-Chavista opposition that openly challenges the legitimacy of his narrowly won election, Maduro has had to deal with a split w ithin Chavezs own former political base. Shifter pointed out that among the military, which was once a source of significant strength for Chavez, more support is given to Diosdado Cabello, currently head of Venezuelas parliament and whose supporters believe he was the rightful heir to the presidency. Maduros legitimacy stems largely from his perceived ideological fidelity, the reason for his selection by Chavez to lead in the first place. Shifter said this leads him to emulate his predecessor and makes rapprochement with the United States less probable. Still, ideological concerns may not ultimately decide the issue. Venezuela has inherited from Chavez an economy in difficult straits, which continues to suffer from notorious shortages and high inflation. Oil economy Over half of Venezue las federal budget revenues come from its oil industry, which also accounts for 95 percent of the countrys exports. Estimated at 77 billion barrels, its proven reserves of black go ld are the largest of any nation in the world.
Despite a troubled political relationship, its principal customer is the United States, which imports nearly a million barrels a day from Venezuela. Venezuelas oil industry has been officially nationalised since the 1970s, and, as president, Chavez further tightened govern ment control
over its production. His government took a greater chunk of revenues and imposed quotas that ensured a certain percentage would always go directly towards aiding Venezuelans via social spending and fuel subsidies. While these measures may be popular with Venezuelans, who pay the lowest price for gasoline in the world, critics argue such policies hampered growth and led to mismanagement of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA), the main state-run oil company. The same critics also point to increasing debt levels, slowdowns in productions and accidents stemming from faulty infrastructure. In
order to boost production, PdVSA agreed in May to accept a number of major loans. This includes one from Chevron, one of the largest U.S. oil companies , which will
work with Venezuelans to develop new extraction sites. The oil sector is in deep trouble in Venezuela production is down and the economic situation is deteriorating, explained Shifter. They know they need foreign investment to increase production, and this is in part what has motivated Maduro to reach out. If its economy continues to falter,
Venezuela may be further tempted to embrace the United States, which has the largest, most sophisticated fossil fuel industry in the world. Kerrys recent words suggest that the administration of President Barack Obama would be waiting with open arms.
Venezuela cannot confront its economic crisis and the United States at the same time, Diana Villiers
Negroponte, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a Washington think tank, told IPS, and we are a pragmatic country which will deal with Maduro if it is in our interests. Indeed, Negroponte said she was optimistic about the possibility of rapprochement between the two countries within the next six months. She notes a troika of issues on which the United States is looking for Venezuelan cooperation: counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and assistance in ridding Colombia of its FARC rebels.
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Plan is Bipartisan
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JIM WYSS June 26, 2013 (Decade-old defunct group may be the key to better US-Venezuela ties http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/26/194987/decade-old-defunct-group-may-be.html#storylink=cpy)
BOGOTA, Colombia The 2002 snapshot shows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro standing on a New England tarmac with his arms draped around U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-NY. At the time they were all lawmakers. Everyone's smiling. Despite deep economic ties, the United States and Venezuela have been at odds for years. Maduro - like his late boss Hugo Chavez - has accused the Imperio of trying to kill him and destroy his socialist reforms. The U.S. has yet to explicitly recognize that Maduro won April's contested election and it blasts his administration on its human rights and drug record. But behind
the scenes, relationships built a decade ago during legislative exchanges, which became known as the Boston Group, seem to be bearing fruit. And that's sparking talk of reviving the group, which has been defunct for seven years. On June 5, Venezuela released
filmmaker Tim Tracy, who had been detained for more than a month on espionage charges. The man credited with springing him is former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., one of the founders of the Boston Group. A few hours later that same day, Kerry and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua announced they would begin talks to exchange ambassadors for the first time since 2010. The man charged with leading those talks? Calixto Garcia, the country's top diplomat to the United States, and also a Boston Group alumnus. Garcia and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson held their first meeting Tuesday, but officials did not provide details. "It
shows that relationships built and conversations that took place 10 or 15 years earlier can make a difference down the road," said Meeks, who founded the group with Delahunt and former Rep. Cass Ballinger, R-N.C. "No one ever knows who will become secretary of state or president of a country." The Boston Group brought together Democrats, Republicans, communists, socialists and capitalists and forced them to find common ground, said Pedro Diaz-Blum, a former Venezuelan lawmaker and the group's
coordinator. A conflict resolution expert was brought in to bring civility to the sometimes heated encounters. "A lot of people from both sides of the political spectrum thought that trying to engage in dialogue was naive," said Diaz-Blum, who has been trying to revive the group. "But today, I think our work was justified." The idea of closer Venezuela-U.S. ties is anathema to some. Factions within Venezuela's opposition have been lobbying the region not to recognize Maduro's presidency. When Kerry and Jaua met this month - on the sidelines of an Organization of American States meeting in Guatemala - some saw it as betrayal. And the rhetoric has been particularly divisive. Maduro has accused former U.S. diplomats of plotting to assassinate him and has suggested that the CIA "inoculated" Chavez with the cancer that killed him in March. But the Boston Group was born amid just such tensions, said Saul Ortega, a ruling-party deputy and a former member of the group. The initiative came together in the wake of a 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez, and which the socialist firebrand blamed on the opposition and the United States.
"It was, perhaps, the most difficult time for the relationship between our two countries," Ortega said. "But we managed to start a dialogue and a debate about common interests ... we managed to do a lot of good things." Through those meetings, Venezuela offered subsidized
heating oil to poor families in the northeastern United States, and the U.S. promoted what it hoped would become Venezuela's answer to C-SPAN. But
most of
the activity took place behind the scenes,
Diaz-Blum said.
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Immigration Answers
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***Uniqueness***
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AFF Politics Core Wont PassEmployer Mandate
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Wont passemployer mandate means House will draw out concerns over the border AP 7-11 Associated Press July 11th [2013 Bush nudges GOP on immigration as lawmakers meet]
Divided on immigration, House Republicans bluntly challenged President Barack Obama's willingness to secure the nation's borders on Wednesday, and appeared unimpressed by George W. Bush's advice to carry a "benevolent spirit" into a debate that includes a possible path to citizenship for millions. Emerging from a closed-door meeting, GOP
leaders affirmed a step-by-step approach to immigration but offered neither specifics nor a timetable nor any mention of possible citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country unlawfully. Instead, in a written statement noting that the White House recently delayed a key part of the health care law, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other leaders said the action raised concerns that the administration "cannot be trusted to deliver on its promises to secure the border and enforce laws as part of a single, massive bill like the one passed by the Senate."
Employer mandate delay undermines Obama credibility on immigration reform and debt ceiling HotAir 7-5 [7-5-2013 ObamaCare delay undermines entire White House agenda
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/05/obamacare-delay-undermines-entire-white-house-agenda/ ObamaCare delay undermines entire White House agenda The White House wants to spin the delay in enforcing the employer mandate of
ObamaCare as evidence that theyre listening to Americans and the business sector and attempting to be flexible on implementa tion. Rich Lowry isnt buying it. In an essay yesterday for Politico, Lowry explains that the delay comes from the incompetence of the White House more than three years after pushing an unworkable bill through Congress, combined with its clear intention to manipulate the law for its own political benefit: The administration can call it whatever it wants, but there is no hiding the embarrassment of a climbdown on a high-profile feature of President Barack Obamas signature initiative although the administration seemed determined to do all it could to hide it. If Bloomberg hadnt broken the news on Tuesday, the administration was apparently planning to announce it on July 3 only because the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve were too far off. The reason for the delay, were told, is incompetence. The administrations story is that it simply couldnt find a way to implement the insurance reporting requirements on employers within the time frame set out in the law. In this telling, the mandate was merely collateral damage it had to be put off, along with the accompanying $2,000-per-employee fine on firms with more than 50 employees who dont offer health coverage. This just happens to be the mandate that is causing howls of pain from businesses and creating perverse incentives for them to limit their hiring or to hire part- rather than full-time employees. And it just happens that 2015 the new target year for implementation is after a midterm election year rather during one. It must all be a lucky break. Obamacare was sold on two flagrantly false promises: that you could keep the insurance you have and that prices for insurance would drop. But employers will dump significant numbers of employees onto the exchanges to save on their own health-care costs. And the latest indication of the laws price shock came via The Wall Street Journal this week, which reported, healthy consumers could see insurance rates double or even triple when they l ook for individual coverage. That demonstrates the underlying incompetence of the ObamaCare project, from start to finish. It promises something that it not on ly couldnt deliver, but made all but impossible from its very existence. On top of that, it created a huge top-down bureaucracy that makes everything more costly for all participants in the system government, providers, insurers, employers, and consumers. That also increased the likelihood of incompetence, capriciousness, and failure, which is a large part of the reason that the employer mandate had to be delayed the other part being the approaching 2014 midterm election cycle, of cou rse. This
creates a bigger headache for Obama and his administration than merely the Affordable Care Act rollout, though. They face two big policy debates in the coming months immigration reform in the House, and the budget and debt ceiling in both chambers of Congress. By declaring the right to arbitrarily ignore statutory law and defy Congress in this matter, just how is Congress supposed to negotiate with the administration on anything else? Allahpundit blogged about the impact on border-security statutes earlier this week, butConn Carroll and Mickey Kaus point out another component in the comprehensive bill that might be even more vulnerable to Obama administration capriciousness :
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House wont compromise NYT 7-11. The New York Times July 11th [2013 G.O.P. In House Resists Overhaul For Immigration]
Meeting for the first time as a group to hash out their approach to immigration, House
Republicans on Wednesday came down overwhelmingly against a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, putting in jeopardy the future of sweeping legislation that
includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Despite the resistance, Speaker John A. Boehner warned about the steep price of inaction, telling House Republicans that they would be in a weaker political position against a bipartisan Senate coalition and President Obama if they did nothing to answer the immigration measure passed by the Senate last month. House Republicans huddled in a crucial two-and-a-half-hour session in the basement of the Capitol as their leaders tried to devise some response to the demand for immigrationlegislation, especially the Senate provision that would grant a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country. The bill also mandates tough border security provisions that must be in place before the immigrants can gain legal status. The
bottom line was clear: The Republican-controlled House does not plan to take up anything resembling the Senate bill, which many believe is bad policy and smacks of an amnesty strongly opposed by the conservatives who hold sway over much of the rank and file. The House also does not intend to move very quickly, and some Republicans are wary of passing any measure at all that could lead to negotiations with the Senate, talks that could add pressure to the House to consider a broader plan.
The threat of demographic death doesnt apply to the house AP 7-11 Associated Press July 11th [2013 Bush nudges GOP on immigration as lawmakers meet]
Bush's campaign to overhaul immigration legislation while in the White House included the political calculation that Republicans needed to take steps to appeal to Hispanic voters who are an increasingly large part of the population, particularly in states like Texas, Florida, Nevada and Colorado. At the same time, relatively few House Republicans represents districts with substantial Hispanic populations, and many say they fear primary election challenges from the right if they support citizenship for immigrants in the United States illegally.
Immigration reform wont passHouse Republicans

Fox News 6/24 Senators tout 70 votes for immigration reform as Paul predicts bill already 'dead' in House,
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/24/staunch-immigration-reform-critic-sen-lee-thinks-bill-will-get-70-senatevotes/#ixzz2XAJyB3Wt Even with one of the Senates strongest opponents to the chambers sweeping immigration-reform bill saying Sunday that the legislation will likely pass this week with a resounding 70 votes, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul predicted the legislation was doomed in the more conservative House. Its dead on arrival in the House, said the Tea Party-backed Paul. The House is much closer to me. Paul made the remarks as Utah Sen. Mike Lee, among
the most conservative Senate Republicans, told Fox News Sunday the bill is likely to pass with as many as 70 votes. Their remarks comes as the Senate prepares for a preliminary but key vote on the bill Monday night or
Obama is also hosting a meeting Monday at the White House with eight CEOs, business owners and entrepreneurs to discuss immigration reform, and to push for support of the bill among the business community. Obama is expected to emphasize a report released by the Congressional Budget Office last week that said the bill would increase the real GDP by up to 3.3% in 2023, and by 5.4% in 2033. The group of
Tuesday that should result in Senate passage by the Democratic leaderships goal of July 4. President senators that crafted the legislation is trying to get 70 votes to show the bill has widespread bipartisan support in the Democrat-controlled chamber and to give it momentum as it heads into the Republican-controlled House with a more uncertain future. The Senate last week introduced a so-called Border Surge amendment, which included 70,000 additional U.S. border agents and 700 more miles of border fencing, to garner support from lawmakers who said the influx of illegal immigrants remains a problem and to put added political pressure on House conservatives. Still, Paul told CNNs State of the Union that
lawmakers in the House
think border security has to come first before you get immigration reform.
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Prolonged talks make bill failure inevitable our evidence assumes momentum in the Senate Johnson, 6/24 (Fawn Johnson, National Journal, Times Up. Immigration Wont Pass This Year 6/24/13,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/time-s-up-immigration-won-t-pass-this-year-20130623) Its not the Senates fault, not this time. The upper chamber is well on track to comfortably pass this week a sweeping bill that would legalize millions of undocumented immigrants and dramatically boost troops on the border. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a leader in the immigration effort, said on CNN'sState of the Union that two-
thirds of the Senate is already in favor of the bill. But the House is slogging along on a piece-by-piece approach that does nothing but stretch out the debate until all thats left are wisps of ideas on work visas, local police enforcement, and electronic verification of workers. Indeed, the House might not kill the bill outright, but the GOP players are passing the ball around until the clock runs out. Whats that clock look like? After senators get the bill done probably in time to make their weekend barbeques -- they have a weeklong July 4 break. And then they get to wait for colleagues on the other side of the Capitol who will have four weeks four weeks to deliberate before Congress takes off for an even lengthier recess in August. Once Washington meets autumn, immigration falls off the priority track thanks to the reemergence of fiscal crisis. The House Judiciary Committee has yet to tackle the most difficult issues on immigrationwhat to do with the current undocumented population and how to handle the future flow of low-skilled immigrants. There are no signs that the committee is working on any such bills. We don't know who would sponsor them or, on the off chance that someone actually puts pen to paper, that such measures could even get out of committee. What about the
House floor? The best hope for the immigration legislation to continue moving forward would be an "immigration week" in the House in July, in which members vote on several different bills to set up a far more conservative proposal than the solution posed in the Senate. Under this theoretical "immigration week," the House would vote on a severe enforcement measure to give local police the authority to apprehend, investigate, and detain people suspected of residing in the country illegally. Members would vote to mandate electronic verification of employees. The House might vote on a decidedly anti-union agriculture bill to give temporary work visas to undocumented farm workers but not a path to citizenship. But last week's unexpected and embarrassing defeat of the farm bill, courtesy of 62 feisty tea partiers, may give House GOP leaders pause before they bring up that one. Only one of the smaller immigration bills that the Judiciary Committee will have ready for the floor in early July, on high-skill work visas, has the slightest chance of getting help from Democrats. The pro-business New Democrat Coalition has gone out of its way to praise Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., for proposing to boost the number of H-1B visas available for tech firms, but there are parts of the bill they don't support. Yet even the moderate Democrats are lining up behind the Senate immigration bill instead of the House approach on high-skilled immigration. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., who leads the immigration task force for the New Democrats, told National Journal that he does not want a hightech bill to be a "distraction" from the comprehensive legislation being embraced by the Senate. Somewhere in there, a bipartisan group of seven House members could release their own comprehensive proposal on immigration reform. But none of the members of this "gang" can tell you what happens to it next. They have no commitment from Goodlatte to push it through the Judiciary Committee, and all they know from House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is that Goodlatte calls the shots.
Then comes August, the month in which legislation dies. The last time the Senate passed a major immigration bill in 2006, House Republicans used the August recess to kill it by staging a series of hearings around the country that did nothing but rile up conservatives against it. Let's not forget the health care bill, which only passed after President Obama forced it through the Senate with Democratic votes
using a parliamentary tactic that isn't available on immigration. It was in August of 2009 that Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, then the ranking member of the Finance Committee, definitively announced his opposition to the health care bill, ensuring that GOP senators would line up behind him. And at that time, Democrats controlled the House, which is how Obama pushed that bill over the finish line. When
lawmakers return to the Capitol in September, they will be facing another financial crisis as they debate raising the country's debt ceiling. The four- to six-week countdown toward extreme limitations on government payments to Social Security or military operations will do two things: It will suck all the life out of any deliberative legislative effort, immigration included, and it will polarize the political parties. It will be far from fertile ground for the biggest immigration overhaul in 30 years. Proponents of the Senate's immigration package are hoping that a strong vote this week
among senators will push the more reluctant House Republicans to act, if only to get the emotional issue out of the way. "We know there's going to be hard-line opponents. We know there's a number of people, [Rep.] Paul Ryan, [D-Wis.], and others, who are in favor of this and will be pitching it to their colleagues. That's going to be the group that's interesting to watch," said America's Voice Executive Director Frank Sharry. But Sharry acknowledged the
most problematic hurdle to passing an immigration overhaulsupport from a majority of House Republicansstill eludes proponents. "The House leadership will try to muster 120 votes for a path to citizenship. I find it hard to think they will get there," he said. If House Republicans keep deliberating at their current pace, the bill will die from sheer talk.
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Republicans are uncooperative stymies passage Fund, 6/24 (John Fund, National Review, Immigration-Reform Scare Tactics 6/24/2013, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351814/immigration-reformscare-tactics-john-fund) Speaker Boehner
announced last week that he would not support any immigration bill that didnt accord with the Hastert Rule, which holds that a majority of the majority party must support a measure for it to be brought to the House floor . The
very real prospect that House Republicans wont pass the Senate bill without making major changes of their own has many in th e news media warning that failure could mean the very death of the GOP. Sunday, on CBSs Face the Nation, the first question that host Bob Schieffer asked Alabama senator Jim Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee and a critic of the Gang of Eight bill, was a blatantly political one: Do you think Republicans get it on immigration? Because people like Lindsey Graham are saying if you dont do something, reaching out to Hispanics, you it might not you might not need to run anybody for president next time, because with the demographics changing in this country, its going to be impossible to elect a Republican president if you dont get substantial Hispanic support. Senator Sessions gamely pointed out that a new Congressional Budget Office study has found that the Gang of Eight bill would probably reduce illegal immigration by only 25 percent. And CBO
concludes that the legal immigration will be dramatically increased and well have in addition to that, were going to have lower wages and higher unemployment according to the CBO analysis of this bill, Sessions said. Why would any member of Congress want to vote for a bill at a time of high unemployment, falling wages, to bring in a huge surge of new labor that can only hurt the poorest among us the most?
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Obamas spending capital on warming regulations Harder, 6/24 (Amy Harder, National Journal, Obama Plans Marathon Sprint on Climate Change 6/24/2013, http://www.nationaljournal.com/dail y/obamaplans-marathon-sprint-on-climate-change-20130624)
is ready to take one more shot at global warming with the last, least-popular, and messiest tool hes got left: regulations administered by the politically besieged Environmental Protection Agency. It wont be popular, it might not
President Obama work, and it could jeopardize his pick to head EPA. But the reality is that, three years after Congress killed a cap-and-trade bill, Obama is running out of time. If he doesnt finalize EPA rules controlling greenhouse-gas emissions before he leaves the White House, a Republican president, or a GOP-controlled Senate, could undo the
is serious about making it a second-term priority, Heather Zichal, Obamas top energy and climate adviser, said at an event last week. He knows this is a legacy issue. The effort amounts to both a marathon and a sprint, in which Obama must simultaneously navigate political, legal, and policy hurdles that could halt his efforts if he fails to map out a clear way forward.
rulesand his environmental legacy. He At issue is a pair of regulations controlling greenhouse-gas emissions from new and existing power plants, the latter of which account for nearly 40 percent of the countrys heat-trapping emissions. EPA proposed rules for new plants last spring but missed its April deadline to finalize them. The agency has also put on ice parallel rules targeting almost 600 existing coal-fired power plants. The rules covering existing plants could have the greatest impact, both on cutting carbon emissions and raising the cost of electricity, because coal is the cheapest, most prevalent, and dirtiest way to produce electricity. In a speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday,
Obama will outline a timeline for EPA to move forward regulating carbon emissions at new and existing power plants. The time will go very quickly because regulations dont move quickly through the process, said Joe Kruger, who served as deputy associate director for
energy and climate change at the White House Council on Environmental Quality during Obamas first term. It will be a bit of a time crunch to get it done by the end of the Obama second term. Kruger, who now directs energy and environmental policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, predicted the administration will succeed because Obama
is putting his own political capital into the issue. They will figure out one way or another how to get it
done, he said.
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AFF Politics Core Debt Thumper

Debt talks prevent immigration reform McGregor, 6/24 (Richard McGregor, Financial Times News, Weak Republican leadership endangers Obama agenda 6/24/2013,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3a66c240-dc0f-11e2-8853-00144feab7de.html#axzz2XFqiKOcV) But the
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farm bills failure was evidence of the obstacles that John Boehner, the Republican House Speaker, faces to rally his members around any measure in alignment with a significant number of Democrats. The House is likely to debate immigration around the same time the White House will ask it to vote to increase the countrys borrowing limit, a fight that brought the US to t he brink of default in August 2011. The debt ceiling debate will take place in a very different context this time, with the economy recovering and the US budget deficit falling rapidly after earlier deals on tax rises and spending cuts. There is also a certain crisis fatigue, said Stan Collender, a former
congressional staffer, at Qorvis Communication, a Washington consultancy. The debt ceiling will probably be increased eventually, even if a prolonged stand-off has the potential to damage confidence in the economy. This
isnt 2011: if Republicans provoke a debt ceiling confrontation over demands for massive, offsetting spending cuts, the business community is going to come unglued, said John Lawrence, former chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader in the House. But the political capital needed to get the statutory debt ceiling raised has the potential to drain the energy and spirit of compromise that both sides will need to forge a majority coalition for immigration.
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***Impact***
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The Senate Bill codifies xenophobic and draconian measurescant solve structural violence their evidence assumes an idealistic version of CIR Gonzalez 6-26 [Antonio Gonzlez June 26, 2013 (president of the William C. Velsquez Institute in San Antonio
Antonio Gonzlez: Senate's immigration bill is not worthy http://www.reporternews.com/news/2013/jun/26/antoniogonz225lez-senates-immigration-bill-is/)] As the Senates comprehensive immigration reform bill, S744, continues its tortured transformation from an ostensibly wellintentioned reform concept to a punitive, national security bill, Hispanic leaders are increasingly questioning the worthiness of the measure. The internal debate is being polarized by those who say the bill is the last chance to legalize the undocumented, even though S744, as written, contains fatal flaws that will: Exclude most undocumented from legalization; Continue mass deportations; Create de facto immigrant worker indentured servitude; Fund billions in defense-industry pork for more drones, walls and guards on the U.S.-Mexico border; Enable massive racial profiling and discrimination by codifying E-Verify, the Internet-based system through which businesses can determine an individuals eligibility to work in the United States. But this is not the first time the immigrant and Latino movements centerpiece reform bill has been overrun by xenophobic forces. History is repeating itself as S744 is being hijacked, just as was the 1982 legalization bill
advocated by then-U.S. Rep. Edward Roybal, D-Calif. Legendary in Hispanic circles and affectionately referred to as the Old Man, Ed Roybal was the father of Hispanic empowerment in California as well as a founder of the nascent immigrant rights movement. He died in 2005. After years of trying to legalize undocumented immigrants, in 1982 Roybal championed the Simpson-Mazzoli legalization bill. But when it was amended to include measures that violated labor and human rights, Roybal introduced dozens of amendments of his own, effectively killing the bill he had earlier advocated. California Hispanic leaders, including Roybal, would try and fail again in 1984, this time walking out at the Democratic National Convention, shaming presidential nominee Walter Mondale after Democratic congressional leadership allowed anti-immigrant forces to gut the Latino-supported reform bill. The walkout killed the hijacked bill. Persistence paid off as Roybal helped lead a coalition that in partnership with Republican President Reagan prodded Congress in 1986 to enact the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). In effect, it legalized 2.9 million people, an estimated 70 percent of the undocumented at that time. Contrary to the balderdash heard today in D.C., IRCA and its amnesty provisions are sanctified among Hispanics as one of the best programs ever undertaken by the federal government. It had immensely positive socio-economic benefits for immigrant-heavy states such as California and Texas in ensuing years. How different Roybals 1982 and 1984 conclusions were to those of Democrats now, Todays Democratic legislators appear set to support comprehensive immigration reform no matter how punitive and/or ineffective its provisions are. Democrats want to claim victory with Hispanic voters, who are spun daily by corporate media that hype the bill in lockstep with the liberal establish ment. Theres too much pressure from the donors and special interests to jump ship even if its the right thing to do, legislators and advocates complain. Indeed, President Barack Obama held a White House meeting with advocates in May, instructing them not to try to improve S744. Importantly, liberal foundations and interest groups supporting comprehensive immigration reform have donated tens of millions in recent years to mostly D.C.-based immigrant rights and Latino groups, in essence co-opting them. But enacting federal legislation is not for the fainthearted. Those who purport to represent our countrys immigr ants in the halls of Congress would do well to remember Roybal. The Old Man wouldve scuttled this deal. He wisely knew that no bill is better than a bad bill. The new Hispanic experts who populate the cable networks should believe their own words. Fifty million Hispanics today are more powerful than ever and need not accept bad legislation as if they were migajeros (beggars). This is not Hispanics last chance, just as it wasnt in 1982 or 1984. Thanks to the ever -growing Hispanic vote, public opinion has pivoted from excluding immigrants to including immigrants. Polls clearly favor generous legalization. Now the Hispanic challenge is to get Congress to reflect that reality, with inclusive, non-punitive legislation, whether in 2013, 2015 or 2017. S744 demanded nothing less.
falls far short of that goal. It should be dramatically improved or rejected. Old Man Roybal would have
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AFF Politics Core US India Relations Impact

No impact to visa fightsRelations are resilient The Hindu 9-29-10 - India conveys concerns to U.S. over a slew of issues,
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http://www.hindu.com/2010/09/29/stories/2010092964211600.htm NEW YORK: India conveyed its concerns to the U.S. over the H-1B visa fee increase, export control restrictions and the ban on outsourcing, at a meeting between External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here on Monday. Our concerns have been
raised, and we have spoken our views about the risks inherent in protectionist trends that often detract from the positive impulses of cooperation in trade and economic
I think that was also understood by the U.S. administration , and they were agreeable to the fact that we need to discuss these issues and try to resolve
interaction between the two countries, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, who was present at the meeting, told reporters.
them, she said. However, Ms. Rao said the spat over the visa fee increase should be viewed only as a small part of a larger relationship between the two countries. ...The sum of the relationship is greater than its parts, and what we have is growing strategic dialogue and growing partnership between the two countries. The Americans also noted that in a large and complicated relationship, there were bound to be some irritants. But I think what unites us is the fact t hat there is so much good and so much superb cooperation that is taking place, so I think that good common cooperation will help carry us through a lot of these irritants, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake said.
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No war Indo-Pak War Enders, 2 (David, Daily News Editor for the Michigan Daily, Experts say nuclear war still unlikely,
http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2002/01/30/News/Experts.Say.Nuclear.War.Still.Unl ikely-1404620.shtml) University political science Prof. Ashutosh Varshney becomes animated when asked about the likelihood of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. "Odds are close to zero ," Varshney said forcefully, standing up to pace a little bit in his office. "The assumption that India and Pakistan cannot
manage their nuclear arsenals as well as the U.S.S.R. and U.S. or Russia and China concedes less to the intellect of leaders in both India and Pakistan than would be warranted." The world"s two youngest nuclear powers first tested weapons in 1998, sparking fear of subcontinental nuclear war a fear Varshney finds ridiculous. the masses are not," he said. "Watching the evening news, CNN, I think
"The decision makers are aware of what nuclear weapons are, even if
they have vastly overstated the threat of nuclear war," political science Prof . Paul
Huth said. Varshney added that there are numerous factors working against the possibility of nuclear war. " India is committed to a no-first-strike policy," Varshney said. "It is virtually impossible for Pakistan to go for a first strike, because the retaliation would be gravely dangerous." Political science Prof . Kenneth Lieberthal, a former special assistant to President Clinton at the National Security Council, agreed. "Usually a country that is in the position that Pakistan is in would not shift to a level that would ensure their total destruction," Lieberthal said, making note of India"s considerably larger nuclear arsenal. "American intervention is another reason not to expect nuclear war," Varshney said. "If anything has happened since September 11, it is that the command control system has strengthened. The trigger is in very safe hands." But the low probability of nuclear war does not mean tensions between the two countries who have fought three wars since they were created in 1947 will not erupt. "The possibility of conventional war between the two is higher. Both sides are looking for ways out of the current tension ,"
Lieberthal said.
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AFF Politics Core Hegemony Impact
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No impact to hegemony Fettweis 10 (Chris Fettweis, Professor of national security affairs @ U.S. Naval War College, Georgetown University Press, Dangerous times?: the
international politics of great power peace Google Books) Simply stated, the hegemonic stability theory proposes that international peace is only possible when there is one country strong enough to make and enforce a set of rules. At the height of Pax Romana between 27 BC and 180 AD, for example, Rome was able to bring unprecedented peace and security to the Mediterranean. The Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century brought a level of stability to the high seas. Perhaps the current era is peaceful because the United States has established a de facto Pax Americana where no power is strong enough to challenge its dominance, and because it has established a set of rules that a generally in the interests of all countries to follow. Without a benevolent hegemony, some strategists fear, instability may break out around the globe. Unchecked conflicts could cause humanitarian disaster and, in todays interconnected world economic turmoil that would ripple throughout global financial markets. If the United St ates were to abandon its commitments abroad, argued Art, the world would become a more dangerous place and, sooner or later, that would rebound to Americas detriment. If the massive spending that the United States engages in actually produces stability in the international political and economic systems, then perhaps internationalism is worthwhile. There
are good theoretical and empirical reasons, however, the belief that U.S. hegemony is not the primary cause of the current era of stability. First of all, the hegemonic stability argument overstates the role that the United States plays in the system. No country is strong enough to police the world on its own. The only way there can be stability in the community of great powers is if self-policing occurs, ifs states have decided that their interest are served by peace. If no pacific normative shift had occurred among the great powers that was filtering down through the system, then no amount of international constabulary work by the United States could maintain stability. Likewise, if it is true that such a shift has occurred, then most of what the hegemon spends to bring stability would be wasted. The 5 percent of the worlds population that live in the United States simple could not force peace upon an unwilling 95. At the risk of beating the metaphor to death, the United States may be patrolling a neighborhood that has already rid itself of crime. Stability and unipolarity may be simply coincidental. In order for U.S. hegemony to be the reason for global stability, the rest of the
world would have to expect reward for good behavior and fear punishment for bad. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not always proven to be especially eager to engage in humanitarian interventions abroad. Even rather incontrovertible evidence of genocide has not been sufficient to inspire action.
Hegemonic stability can only take credit for influence those decisions that would have ended in war without the presence, whether physical or psychological, of the United States. Ethiopia and Eritrea are hardly the only states that could go to war without the slightest threat of U.S. intervention. Since most of the world today is free to fight without U.S. involvement, something else must be at work. Stability exists in many places where no hegemony is present. Second, the limited empirical evidence we have suggests that there is little connection between the relative level of U.S. activism and international stability. During the 1990s the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially, By 1998 the United States was
spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990. To internationalists, defense hawks, and other believers in hegemonic stability this irresponsible "peace dividend" endangered both national and global security "No serious analyst of American military capabilities," argued Kristol and Kagan, "doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet Americas responsibilities to itself and to world peace."" If the pacific
trends were due not to U.S. hegemony but a strengthening norm against interstate war, however, one would not have expected an increase in global instability and violence. The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful while the United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable Pentagon, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address power vacuums; no security dilemmas drove mistrust and arms races; no regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished. The rest of the world acted as if the threat ofinternational war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S. capabilities. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its military spending under President Clinton, and it kept declining as the Bush Administration ramped spending back up. No complex statistical analysis should be necessary to reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated. It is also worth noting for our purposes that the United States was no less safe.
No high skilled worker shortage Costa 11-19-12. Daniel Costa, 11/19/2012. Attorney and immigration policy analyst. His areas of research include a
wide range of labor migration issues, including the management of U.S. guest worker programs, both high- and less-
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skilled migration, and immigrant workers rights. STEM labor shortages?Microsoft report distorts reality about computing occupations, Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortagesmicrosoft-report-distorts/.
Microsoft Corporation recently published a report warning that there will not be enough American college graduates in computer science to fill all of the available job openings in computerrelated occupations between now and 2020 (Microsoft 2012). Microsoft uses Bureau of Labor Statistics projections to claim that from 2010 to 2020 there will be an additional 1.2 million job openings in computing professions that require at least a bachelors degree (Microsoft 2012, 6). Microsoft warns that since only about 40,000 Americans graduate with a bachelors degree in computer science each year, many of the 120,000 projected job openings in computing occupations each year will go unfilled. As further evidence to support its claim of present and future labor shortages in computer-related occupations, Microsoft points to the 6,000 job openings at the company, 3,400 of which are for researchers, developers and engineers (Microsoft 2012, 3). As part of its analysis, the Microsoft report asserts that the U.S. educational system is failing to produce enough graduates in the broader science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines (also known as the STEM fields). It recommends that Congress address the alleged shortage of STEM workers between now and 2020 in part by making 20,000 new H-1B temporary nonimmigrant guest worker visas available eac h year for employers that hire foreign graduates with degrees in STEM fields from U.S. universities. In addition, the report suggests that Congress recapture unused permanent immigrant visas (green cards) and make 20,000 of them available annually over t he next 10 years to foreign graduates in STEM fields. Microsoft claims that the federal government could raise $5 billion over a decade if it charges employers $10,000 for every new STEM H-1B visa and $15,000 for each STEM green card. These funds would then be redistributed to states where STEM education investments are needed (Microsoft 2012, 5). The report also calls for str engthening the U.S. pipeline for educating and training STEM workers by: 1) strengthening K12 STEM education, 2) broadening access to computer science in high schools, 3) increasing STEM capacity in higher education, with a special focus on computer science, and 4) helping more students obtain post-secondary credentials and degrees by addressing the college completion crisis (Micro soft 2012, 10). The study that produced these recommendations contains a number of flaws, the most obvious of which are addressed in this memorandum. Specifically, this paper finds: The Microsoft report projects a labor shortage over the next eight years by incorrectly assuming that only individuals with a bachelors degree in computer science can fill jobs in computer -related occupations. Data analyzed for this memorandum as well as other studies show that less than one-fourth to less than one-half of workers in computing occupations have a computer science degree. The
report and Microsoft officials say a labor shortage already exists in computer-related occupations, citing as evidence the fact that the present unemployment rate of workers in those occupations (3.4 percent) is less than the 4 percent unemployment rate that prevails when the national economy is at full employment (generally understood as a 4 to 5 percent unemployment rate). But Microsoft is misleading when it uses the 4 percent full-employment unemployment rate for all workers as the point of reference. Data analyses suggest that for workers in computer-related occupationsand especially for those who hold a college degree (i.e., the workers Microsoft claims there is a shortage of)the actual full-employment unemployment rate is closer to 2 percent. Further evidence that there is no shortage of workers in computer-related occupations is apparent in wage trend data. For example, from 2000 to 2011, the average hourly wage for workers possessing at least a bachelors degree in computer and math occupations rose less than half a percent per year, compared with the sharp wage increases we would see if a labor shortage existed in these occupations.
Granting Microsofts request to increase the supply of STEM workers and workers in computing occupations with college degrees through additional H-1B visas and STEM green cards would propel unemployment rates in these occupations even higher, absent substantial new job creation. This is because unemployment rates for these workers are approximately double where they would stand if these labor markets were at full employment. These higher unemployment rates will keep wages from rising, which may be a desirable outcome for Microsoft but not for workers or the U.S. economy. Contrary to its report and public statements, Microsoft (and other employers in STEM fields) already have plenty of avenues to hire and retain new foreign graduates to work in STEM occupations. Recent
research suggesting that the most highly educated graduates in STEM fields are in fact remaining in the United States for the long term supports this conclusion. Keeping the best and brightest foreign STEM workers in the United States to fill labor shortages in STEM occupations should be a national priority, but recent data show that no significant labor shortages exist, and suggest that an adequate number of foreign graduates in STEM fields are already remaining in the United States to fill the limited job openings available in the stagnating U.S. labor market.
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CIR wont solve the economy Hill et al. 10 Laura E. Hill is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. She has been a research associate at The SPHERE Institute and a
National Institute of Aging postdoctoral fellow. She holds a Ph.D. in demography from the University of California, Berkeley AND*** Magnus Lofstrom is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. He also holds appointments as a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) at the University of Bonn and as a research associate at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He has also served as a researcher and has taught at IZA and at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, San Diego. AND*** Joseph M. Hayes is a research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he studies migration and population change throughout the state. He has studied migration in the Central Valley, the families of newly arrived immigrants to California, and the states prison population. He holds an M.S. i n agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. 2010, Immigrant Legalization Assessing the Labor Market Effects, Public Policy Institute of California, www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_410LHR.pdf#ppic
Legalization of the estimated 12 million unauthorized immigrants residing in the United States would lead to both economic benefits and costs for the nation. Some arguments for comprehensive immigration reform suggest that legalizing immigrants will help end the current recession. This seems unlikely.
Our research suggests that earlier findings
from
the IRCA era may overstate anticipated earnings from a new reform, at least in the short run. We do expect occupational mobility to
improve for formerly unauthorized immigrants with higher skill levels. When compared to the continuously legal, their occupational earnings growth was about 9 to 10 percent. These higher-skill unauthorized immigrants are more likely to be overstayers than crossers, but unauthorized immigrants with college degrees are found in both groups. Lower-skill
unauthorized immigrants are not likely to experience strong occupational mobility as a result of a legalization program (although their occupational earnings grow over time in the United States). It will be important that any new legislation give legalized immigrants incentives to improve their skills, especially in English. The majority of studies investigating the effect of legalizing immigrants on natives earnings suggest that the effects are slightly negative for workers with low skill levels. Since we find no improvements in occupational mobility or wages for the lowest skill levels in the short run, we do not expect that legalizing immigrants would place any increased pressure on the wages of low-skill natives or low-skill legal immigrants. Tax revenues may increase, although many unauthorized immigrants already file federal and state tax returns and pay sales and payroll taxes. We found that about 90 percent of unauthorized immigrants filed federal tax returns in the year before gaining LPR status. We expect that increases in tax revenues resulting from increased earnings among the formerly unauthorized would be modest.
No impact to economic decline Barnett 9 Senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing editor/online columnist for Esquire magazine, columnist for World Politics
Review, Thomas P.M. The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis, World Politics Review, 8/252 009, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules-security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last
new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various
the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-intoPakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the
databases, then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up,
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economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional
deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this
Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic fearmongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.
unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis.
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CIR cant solve relationstheyre too tanked and no one trusts Obama Mark Weisbrot 12-18 is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, DC. He is also
President of Just Foreign Policy, Obama signals four more years of bad relations with Latin America, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121218123136470626.html
President
Obama went too far in throwing gratuitous insults at President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela on Friday, in an interview in Miami. By
doing so, he
not only offended the majority of Venezuelans, who voted to re-elect their president on October 7, but even many who did not. Chavez is fighting for his life, recovering from a difficult cancer operation; in Latin America, as in most of the world, this wholly unnecessary vilification of Chavez by Obama is a breach not only of diplomatic protocol but also of ordinary standards of civility. Perhaps even more
importantly, Obama's
ill-timed aspersions sent an unpleasant message to the rest of the region . While Obama can get away with remarks were noticed by the presidents and foreign ministries of Brazil,
anything in the major media outlets, you can be sure that his
Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and others. The message was clear: Expect four more years of the same failed, Cold War policies toward Latin America that President George W Bush championed and Obama continued in his first term. These presidents see
Chavez as a close friend and ally, someone who has helped them and the region; like millions of Venezuelans they are praying for his recovery. They
also see Washington as responsible for the bad relations between the US and Venezuela (as well as the hemisphere generally), and these unfortunate remarks are additional confirmation. At the 2012 Summit of the Americas, Obama found himself as isolated as George W Bush was at the notorious 2005 summit. It was a sea change from the 2009 Summit, where everyone - including Chavez greeted Obama warmly and saw in him the potential for a new era of US-Latin American relations.
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No high skilled worker shortage Costa 11-19-12. Daniel Costa, 11/19/2012. Attorney and immigration policy analyst. His areas of research include a
wide range of labor migration issues, including the management of U.S. guest worker programs, both high- and lessskilled migration, and immigrant workers rights. STEM labor shortages?Microsoft report distorts reality about computing occupations, Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortagesmicrosoft-report-distorts/.
Microsoft Corporation recently published a report warning that there will not be enough American college graduates in computer science to fill all of the available job openings in computerrelated occupations between now and 2020 (Microsoft 2012). Microsoft uses Bureau of Labor Statistics projections to claim that from 2010 to 2020 there will be an additional 1.2 million job openings in computing professions that require at least a bachelors degree (Microsoft 2012, 6). Microsoft warns that since only about 40,000 Americans graduate with a bachelors degree in computer science each year, many of the 120,000 projected job openings in computing occupations each year will go unfilled. As further evidence to support its claim of present and future labor shortages in computer-related occupations, Microsoft points to the 6,000 job openings at the company, 3,400 of which are for researchers, developers and engineers (Microsoft 2012, 3). As part of its analysis, the Microsoft report asserts that the U.S. educational system is failing to produce enough graduates in the broader science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines (also known as the STEM fields). It recommends that Congress address the alleged shortage of STEM workers between now and 2020 in part by making 20,000 new H-1B temporary nonimmigrant guest worker visas available each year for employers that hire foreign graduates with degrees in STEM fields f rom U.S. universities. In addition, the report suggests that Congress recapture unused permanent immigrant visas (green cards) and make 20,000 of them available annually over the next 10 years to foreign graduates in STEM fields. Microsoft claims that the federal government could raise $5 billion over a decade if it charges employers $10,000 for every new STEM H-1B visa and $15,000 for each STEM green card. These funds would then be redistributed to states where STEM education investments are needed (Microsoft 2012, 5). The report also call s for strengthening the U.S. pipeline for educating and training STEM workers by: 1) strengthening K12 STEM education, 2) broadening access to computer science in high schools, 3) increasing STEM capacity in higher education, with a special focus on computer science, and 4) helping more students obtain post-secondary credentials and degrees by addressing the college completion crisis (Microsoft 2012, 10). The study that produced these recommendations contains a number of flaws, the most obvious of which are addressed in this memorandum. Specifically, this paper finds: The Microsoft report projects a labor shortage over the next eight years by incorrectly assuming that only individuals with a bachelors degree in computer science can fill jobs in computer-related occupations. Data analyzed for this memorandum as well as other studies show that less than one-fourth to less than one-half of workers in computing occupations have a computer science degree. The
report and Microsoft officials say a labor shortage already exists in computer-related occupations, citing as evidence the fact that the present unemployment rate of workers in those occupations (3.4 percent) is less than the 4 percent unemployment rate that prevails when the national economy is at full employment (generally understood as a 4 to 5 percent unemployment rate). But Microsoft is misleading when it uses the 4 percent full-employment unemployment rate for all workers as the point of reference. Data analyses suggest that for workers in computer-related occupationsand especially for those who hold a college degree (i.e., the workers Microsoft claims there is a shortage of)the actual full-employment unemployment rate is closer to 2 percent. Further evidence that there is no shortage of workers in computer-related occupations is apparent in wage trend data. For example, from 2000 to 2011, the average hourly wage for workers possessing at least a bachelors degree in computer and math occupations rose less than half a percent per year, compared with the sharp wage increases we would see if a labor shortage existed in these occupations.
Granting Microsofts request to increase the supply of STEM workers and workers in computing occupations with college degrees through additional H-1B visas and STEM green cards would propel unemployment rates in these occupations even higher, absent substantial new job creation. This is because unemployment rates for these workers are approximately double where they would stand if these labor markets were at full employment. These higher unemployment rates will keep wages from rising, which may be a desirable outcome for Microsoft but not for workers or the U.S. economy. Contrary to its report and public statements, Microsoft (and other employers in STEM fields) already have plenty of avenues to hire and retain new foreign graduates to work in STEM occupations. Recent
research suggesting that the most highly educated graduates in STEM fields are in fact remaining in the United States for the long term supports this conclusion. Keeping the best and brightest foreign STEM workers in the United States to fill labor shortages in STEM occupations should be a national priority, but recent data show that no significant labor shortages exist, and suggest that an adequate number of foreign graduates in STEM fields are already remaining in the United States to fill the limited job openings available in the stagnating U.S. labor market.
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Debt Ceiling Answers
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***Uniqueness***
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No chance of negotiations
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GOP wont raise the ceiling without spending cuts The Cap Times 7-8-13.July 8th [2013 Morning briefing: School vouchers, bus union officials, downtown
bars: http://host.madison.com/news/local/morning-briefing-school-vouchers-bus-union-officials-downtownbars/article_0e78fbe8-e7c8-11e2-a955-001a4bcf887a.html#ixzz2YSo27eGg] GOP may hold debt ceiling hostage to enact Paul Ryans budget: Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress.org reports: "House Republicans will hold the national debt ceiling increase hostage until President Obama agrees to mandatory spending cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the National Journal reports, and will seek to use the leverage of default to force Democrats to enact the policies in Rep. Paul Ryans (RWI) budget. Since slashing discretionary spending to historic lows the discretionary side of the ledger has grown at a slower rate than inflation since 2007 and
now makes up a smaller share of the economy than it did before the Great Recession the GOP has shifted from demanding dollar-for-dollar immediate spending cuts and is now focusing on drafting a range of options to significantly restructure mandatory benefit programs."
AND, Obama wont give in to ANY GOP proposal PoliticusUSA 7-7-13. July 7th [2013 Stupid Linings Playbook: Boehner & Ryan Cook Up A Plan That Hands Dems
the 2014 Election http://www.politicususa.com/2013/07/07/boehner-ryan-cook-debt-ceiling-plan-hands-democrats-2014election.html] The House is responsible for raising the debt ceiling. President Obama doesnt have to agree to any of these options, because he isnt running for reelection ever again. Obama can say no to them all, and Democrats can use these options against Republicans in the 2014 election
campaign. Boehner and Ryan are setting the whole Republican Party up for failure next year. House Republicans may think they are safe, but how safe will they be if they vote to privatize Medicare and Social Security before their reelection campaigns kick off? If House Republicans stay on this course, they will also force Republican Senate candidates to say whether they support privatizing Medicare and Social Security. President Obama isnt going to agree to any of this, and on the off chance that he would, Senate Democrats
have repeatedly vowed to kill anything that touches Social Security and Medicare. In short, the Boehner/Ryan/House GOP plan is already DOA.
No chance of a deal National Journal 6-27-13 [2013 If You Thought the Fiscal Cliff Was Bad, Wait Until This Year's Debt-Ceiling
Showdown]
In a week filled with landmark Supreme Court decisions and significant movement in the Senate on overhauling immigration laws, it's hard to wrap one's mind around the prospect of yet another budget battle. Yet
lurking on the other side of the August recess are more fiscal deadlines and potential chaos, culminating in the need to increase the debt ceiling, probably in October or November. The battle lines of the upcoming debt-ceiling fight will seem familiar to anyone who's paid attention since the summer of 2011, when the country came close to defaulting on its obligations. Democrats, including President Obama, do not believe the debt ceiling should be a bargaining chip in broader budget wars; they say Congress should increase the debt ceiling without any strings attached, as it's traditionally done. But in the era of $1 trillion-plus deficits from 2009 to 2012 and with the rise of the tea party, Republicans began to insist that any increase in the country's borrowing capacity be accompanied by equal cuts in spending. The last standoff brought us the legacies of the failed super committee, the fiscal-cliff compromise that extended
the majority of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and the new realities of the across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. No one is quite sure yet what the debtceiling fight of 2013 will bring.
Nor do Democratic and Republican aides on Capitol Hill have a clear sense of strategy on how best to approach the fall's "mini-cliffs." (It's a fact of life in Congress that the path forward does not usually present itself until lawmakers are faced with a
deadline.) "Maybe we'll have a clearer sense in August," one House Republican aide said. "The items in play, though, are changes to entitlement programs, pro-growth tax reform, and energy and regulatory policy."
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AFF Politics Core Leadership Irrelevant

Obama leadership irrelevant to debt ceilingGOP will resist out of spite
UTNIF 2013
US News & World Reports June 19th [2013 A GOP With a Death Wish http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/susan-milligan/2013/06/19/obama-boehner-and-the-gop-crisis-of-leadership] There's no doubt that Washington in general and Congress in particular are at an historic level of dysfunction. They can't agree on a budget, can't
manage to do even the basic work of the legislative body, let alone put their heads together for big-idea proposals to address climate change, entitlements or education. But there's
an unfortunate tendency in the chattering class to throw up one's collective hands and accuse Obama and sometimes Boehner of failing to show "leadership."
[See a collection of political cartoons on the tea party.] The problem with that accusation is that it
assumes either the president or the speaker has the power to tell people what to do. They can fire their own staffs, but they can't fire elected members of Congress. And the old ways of cajoling and intimidating lawmakers such as threatening to take away pet projects for their districts don't work anymore. There's a solid group of House members (and some senators as well) who simply don't care if they don't get
anything for the home front, and some who actively reject it. On a broader scale, there
are members who don't care if failing to raise the debt ceiling could throw the world into a global recession and permanently damage the nation's credit rating. It's like negotiating with terrorists: people who think they have nothing to lose won't stop until they get everything they want. There's simply no incentive to compromise.
When Congress is at a stalemate, Obama gets accused of being a "weak leader," as if he could somehow bring lawmakers to his side by sheer force of personality. Anyone who's baby-sat a two year old knows how silly this argument is. Someone who isn't concerned about the impact his or her own behavior has on the community at-large isn't going to be moved by strong words or a stern face. Adding to Obama's particular challenge is that there is a group of congressmen who are
so resentful (still) that Obama is president that they
won't participate in anything that will keep Obama from being the "failure" they have deemed him since day one. If Obama tries to let Congress take some ownership of legislation by writing much of it themselves, he is called "weak." If he asserts his authority by nominating someone for his administration that Republicans don't like, he is called arrogant.
Obama wont negotiate over the debt ceiling

Khaleej Times June 24th [2013 Why Obama must prevail for a 'grand bargain']
We can't afford to wait that long. Agreeing on a framework is still possible this year. It can be achieved as part of congressional appropriations negotiations. To be clear, a deal should not be pursued as part of the coming debt ceiling faceoff. President Barack Obama
has already said that he won't negotiate over the debt ceiling. So it should be off the table as a bargaining tool. We should instead lift the debt ceiling through the 2014 election, and
eventually replace it with statutory debttoGDP targets and a constitutional amendment establishing a debttoGDP "credit card" limit. What makes good sense, however, is to link a grand bargain framework to the current negotiations over next year's appropriations .
Pg. 48
AFF Politics Core Employer Mandate Thumper

Employer mandate delay undermines Obama credibility on debt ceiling HotAir 7-5 [7-5-2013 ObamaCare delay undermines entire White House agenda
UTNIF 2013
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/05/obamacare-delay-undermines-entire-white-house-agenda/ ObamaCare delay undermines entire White House agenda The White House wants to spin the delay in enforcing the employer mandate of
ObamaCare as evidence that theyre listening to Americans and the business sector and attempting to be fl exible on implementation. Rich Lowry isnt buying it. In an essay yesterday for Politico, Lowry explains that the delay comes from the incompetence of the White House more than three years after pushing an unworkable bill through Congress, combined with its clear intention to manipulate the law for its own political benefit: The administration can call it whatever it wants, but there is no hiding the embarrassment of a climbdown on a high-profile feature of President Barack Obamas signature initiative although the administration seemed determined to do all it could to hide it. If Bloomberg hadnt broken the news on Tuesday, the administration was apparently pla nning to announce it on July 3 only because the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve were too far off. The reason for the delay, were told, is incompetence. The administrations story is that it simply couldnt find a way to implement the insurance reporting requirements on employers within the time frame set out in the law. In this telling, the mandate was merely collateral damage it had to be put off, along with the accompanying $2,000-per-employee fine on firms with more than 50 employees who d ont offer health coverage. This just happens to be the mandate that is causing howls of pain from businesses and creating perverse incentives for them to limit their hiring or to hire part- rather than full-time employees. And it just happens that 2015 the new target year for implementation is after a midterm election year rather during one. It must all be a lucky break. Obamacare was sold on two flagrantly false promises: that you could keep the insurance you have and that prices for insurance would drop. But employers will dump significant numbers of employees onto the exchanges to save on their own health-care costs. And the latest indication of the laws price shock came via The Wall Street Journal this week, which reported, healthy consumers could see insurance rates double or even triple when they look for individual coverage. That demonstrates the underlying incompetence of the ObamaCare project, from start to finish. It promises something that it not on ly couldnt deliver, but made all but impossible from its very existence. On top of that, it created a huge top-down bureaucracy that makes everything more costly for all participants in the system government, providers, insurers, employers, and consumers. That also increased the likelihood of incompetence, capriciousness, and failure, which is a large part of the reason that the employer mandate had to be delayed the other part being the approaching 2014 midterm election cycle, of cou rse. This
creates a bigger headache for Obama and his administration than merely the Affordable Care Act rollout, though. They face two big policy debates in the coming months immigration reform in the House, and the budget and debt ceiling in both chambers of Congress. By declaring the right to arbitrarily ignore statutory law and defy Congress in this matter, just how is Congress supposed to negotiate with the administration on anything else? Allahpundit blogged about the impact on border-security statutes earlier this week, butConn Carroll and Mickey Kaus point out another component in the comprehensive bill that might be even more vulnerable to Obama administration capriciousness:
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UTNIF 2013
***Impact***
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AFF Politics Core 2acEconomy
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Wont solve the economy ABC 11 (Why Raising the Debt Ceiling Might Not Be Enough, [http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/07/whyraising-the-debt-ceiling-might-not-be-enough.html] Congress has so tangled itself in the thorny vines of its partisan divisions that even if it does find a way to raise the debt ceiling ahead of an August 2nd deadline, that might not be enough to satisfy global markets and credit ratings agencies. While its obvious that some members are trying to figure out a way back from the ledge of default, they might be too close to the edge to back away now. All this talk about fiscal responsibility has set expectations in the global markets (and probably on Main Street, too) that Congress and the Administration are going to actually make some tough choices and make headway on getting Uncle Sams financial house in order. If they dont make real headway, the Federal government might get dinged by the ratings agencies even if they succeed in increasing the debt limit and avoiding technical default. Standard & Poors hinted that real deficit/debt reform (not just a debt limit increase) is needed when they revised its outlook for U.S. ratings to negative in April: Some
compromise that achieves agreement on a comprehensive budgetary consolidation program--containing deficit-reduction measures in amounts near those recently proposed [ed: $4T], and combined with meaningful steps toward implementation by 2013--is our baseline assumption and could lead us to revise the outlook back to stable, writes S&P. Alternatively, the lack of such an agreement or a significant further fiscal deteriorat ion for any reason could lead us to lower the rating. The warning shots from Fitch Ratings and Moodys sound similar notes. It would not be surprising to see Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke asked about this escape hatch during his
I believe, lies in recognizing that our nation's fiscal problems are inherently long-term in nature. Consequently, the appropriate response is to move quickly to enact a credible, long-term plan for fiscal consolidation. By taking decisions today that lead to fiscal consolidation over a longer horizon, policymakers can avoid a sudden fiscal contraction that could put the recovery at risk. At the same time, establishing a credible plan for reducing future deficits now would not only enhance economic performance in the long run, but could also yield near-term benefits by leading to lower long-term interest rates and increased consumer and business confidence.
semi-annual testimony on Wednesday on Capitol Hill. In June, the Chairman offered these words of advice (echoing several years of calls for fiscal changes): The solution to this dilemma,
No impact to economic decline Barnett 9 Senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing editor/online columnist for Esquire magazine, columnist for World Politics
Review, Thomas P.M. The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis, World Politics Review, 8/252009, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules-security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last
new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various
the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-intoPakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional
databases, then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this
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unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis.
UTNIF 2013
Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic fearmongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.
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AFF Politics Core 2acHegemony
UTNIF 2013
Alternative casualties make decline of hege inevitable Copley 12 (Gregory R., editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, Strategic Policy in an Age of Global
Realignment, lexis, June 2012)
3. Strategic Recovery by the US. The
US will not, in 2012 or 2013, show signs of any recovery of its global strategic credibility
sectors
or real strength.
Its
manufacturing and science and technology
will continue to suffer from
low (even
declining) productivity and difficulty in capital formation (for political reasons, primarily). A significant US recovery is not feasible needs
it, will in the timeframe given the present political and economic policies and impasse evident.
US allies will increasingly look to their own outside the US alliance network, or peripheral to
while attempting to sustain their alliance relationship with the US to the extent feasible. Those
increasingly disregard US political/diplomatic pressures , and will seek to accommodate the PRC or regional
actors. The continued economic malaise of the US during 2012, even if disguised by modest nominal GDP growth, will make economic (and therefore strategic) recovery more difficult and ensure that it will take longer. In any event , the fact that the US national debt exceeds the GDP hollows the dollar and thus makes meaningful recovery impossible
in the short-term. The attractiveness of a low dollar value in comparison to other currencies in making US manufacturing investment more feasible than in recent years is offset by declining US workforce productivity and political constraints which penalize investment in manufacturing, or even in achieving appealing conditions for capital formation. Banks are as afraid of such investment as are manufacturing investors themselves.
No Impact to decline Fettweis 10 (Chris Fettweis, Professor of national security affairs @ U.S. Naval War College, Georgetown University Press, Dangerous times?: the
international politics of great power peace Google Books) Simply stated, the hegemonic stability theory proposes that international peace is only possible when there is one country strong enough to make and enforce a set of rules. At the height of Pax Romana between 27 BC and 180 AD, for example, Rome was able to bring unprecedented peace and security to the Mediterranean. The Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century brought a level of stability to the high seas. Perhaps the current era is peaceful because the United States has established a de facto Pax Americana where no power is strong enough to challenge its dominance, and because it has established a set of rules that a generally in the interests of all countries to follow. Without a benevolent hegemony, some strategists fear, instability may break out around the globe. Unchecked conflicts could cause humanitarian disaster and, in todays interconnected world economic turmoil that would ripple throughout global financial markets. If the United States were to abandon its commitments abroad, argued Art, the world would become a more dangerous place and, sooner or later, that would rebound to Americas de triment. If the massive spending that the United States engages in actually produces stability in the international political and economic systems, then perhaps internationalism is worthwhile. There
are good theoretical and empirical reasons, however, the belief that U.S. hegemony is not the primary cause of the current era of stability. First of all, the hegemonic stability argument overstates the role that the United States plays in the system. No country is strong enough to police the world on its own. The only way there can be stability in the community of great powers is if self-policing occurs, ifs states have decided that their interest are served by peace. If no pacific normative shift had occurred among the great powers that was filtering down through the system, then no amount of international constabulary work by the United States could maintain stability. Likewise, if it is true that such a shift has occurred, then most of what the hegemon spends to bring stability would be wasted. The 5 percent of the worlds population that live in the United States simple could not force peace upon an unwilling 95. At the risk of beating the metaphor to death, the United States may be patrolling a neighborhood that has already rid itself of crime. Stability and unipolarity may be simply coincidental. In order for U.S. hegemony to be the reason for global stability, the rest of the
world would have to expect reward for good behavior and fear punishment for bad. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not always proven to be especially eager to engage in humanitarian interventions abroad. Even rather incontrovertible evidence of genocide has not been sufficient to inspire action.
Hegemonic stability can only take credit for influence those decisions that would have ended in war without the presence, whether physical or psychological, of the United States. Ethiopia and Eritrea are hardly the only states that could go to war without the slightest threat of U.S. intervention. Since most of the world today is free to fight without U.S. involvement, something else must be at work. Stability exists in many places where no hegemony is present. Second, the limited empirical University of Texas National Institute in Forensics Pg. 53
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evidence we have suggests that there is little connection between the relative level of U.S. activism and international stability. During the 1990s the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially, By 1998 the United States was
spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990. To internationalists, defense hawks, and other believers in hegemonic stability this irresponsible "peace dividend" endangered both national and global security "No serious analyst of American military capabilities," argued Kristol and Kagan, "doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet Americas responsibilities to itself and to world peace."" If the pacific
trends were due not to U.S. hegemony but a strengthening norm against interstate war, however, one would not have expected an increase in global instability and violence. The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful while the United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable Pentagon, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address power vacuums; no security dilemmas drove mistrust and arms races; no regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished. The rest of the world acted as if the threat ofinternational war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S. capabilities. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its military spending under President Clinton, and it kept declining as the Bush Administration ramped spending back up. No complex statistical analysis should be necessary to reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated. It is also worth noting for our purposes that the United States was no less safe.
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AFF Politics Core 2acGovernment Shut Down/Cyber Terror

No impact to cyberterror Green 2 editor of The Washington Monthly (Joshua, 11/11, The Myth of Cyberterrorism,
UTNIF 2013
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0211.green.html, AG) There's just one problem: There is no such thing as cyberterrorism--no instance of anyone ever having been killed by a terrorist (or anyone else) using a computer. Nor is there compelling evidence that al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization has resorted to computers for any sort of serious destructive activity. What's more, outside of a Tom Clancy novel, computer security specialists believe it is virtually impossible to use the Internet to inflict death on a large scale, and many scoff at the notion that terrorists would bother trying. "I don't lie awake at night worrying about cyberattacks ruining my life," says Dorothy Denning, a computer science professor at Georgetown University and one of the country's foremost cybersecurity experts. "Not only does [cyberterrorism] not rank alongside chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, but it is not anywhere near as serious as other potential physical threats like car bombs or suicide bombers." Which is not to
say that cybersecurity isn't a serious problem--it's just not one that involves terrorists. Interviews with terrorism and computer security experts, and current and former government and military officials, yielded near unanimous agreement that the real danger is from the criminals and other hackers who did $15 billion in damage to the global economy last year using viruses, worms, and other readily available tools. That figure is sure to balloon if more isn't done to protect vulnerable computer systems, the vast majority of which are in the private sector. Yet when it comes to imposing the tough measures on business necessary to protect against the real
people imagine cyberterrorism, they tend to think along Hollywood plot lines, doomsday scenarios in which terrorists hijack nuclear weapons, airliners, or military computers from halfway
cyberthreats, the Bush administration has balked. Crushing BlackBerrys When ordinary around the world. Given the colorful history of federal boondoggles--billion-dollar weapons systems that misfire, $600 toilet seats--that's an understandable concern. But, with few exceptions, it's not one that applies to preparedness for a cyberattack. "The government is miles ahead of the private sector when it comes to cybersecurity," says Michael Cheek, director of intelligence for iDefense, a Virginia-based computer security company with government and private-sector clients. "Particularly the most sensitive military systems." Serious effort and plain good fortune have combined to bring this about. Take nuclear weapons. The biggest fallacy about their vulnerability, promoted in action thrillers like WarGames, is that they're designed for remote operation. "[The movie] is premised on the assumption that there's a modem bank hanging on the side of the computer that controls the missiles," says Martin Libicki, a defense analyst at the RAND Corporation. "I assure you, there isn't." Rather, nuclear weapons and other sensitive military systems enjoy the most basic form of Internet security: they're "air-gapped," meaning that they're not physically connected to the Internet and are therefore inaccessible to outside hackers. (Nuclear weapons also contain "permissive action links," mechanisms to prevent weapons from being armed without inputting codes carried by the president.) A retired military official was somewhat indignant at the mere suggestion: "As a general principle, we've been looking at this thing for 20 years. What cave have you been living in if you haven't considered this [threat]?" When it comes to cyberthreats, the
Defense Department has been particularly vigilant to protect key systems by isolating them from the Net and even from the Pentagon's internal network. All new software must be submitted to the National Security Agency for security testing. "Terrorists could not gain control of our spacecraft, nuclear weapons, or any other type of high-consequence asset," says Air Force Chief Information Officer John Gilligan. For
more than a year, Pentagon CIO John Stenbit has enforced a moratorium on new wireless networks, which are often easy to hack into, as well as common wireless devices such as PDAs, BlackBerrys, and even wireless or infrared copiers and faxes. The September 11 hijackings led to an outcry that airliners are particularly susceptible to cyberterrorism. Earlier this year, for instance, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) described "the absolute havoc and devastation that would result if cyberterrorists suddenly shut down our air traffic control system, with thousands of planes in mid-flight." In fact, cybersecurity experts give some of their highest marks to the FAA, which reasonably separates its administrative and air traffic control systems and strictly air-gaps the latter. And there's a reason the 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters instead of keyboards: It's
impossible to hijack a plane remotely, which eliminates the possibility of a high-tech 9/11 scenario in which planes are used as weapons. Another source of concern is terrorist infiltration of our intelligence agencies. But here, too, the risk is slim. The CIA's classified computers are also air-gapped, as is the FBI's entire computer system. "They've been paranoid about this forever," says Libicki,
adding that paranoia is a sound governing principle when it comes to cybersecurity. Such concerns are manifesting themselves in broader policy terms as well. One notable characteristic of last year's Quadrennial Defense Review was how strongly it focused on protecting information systems.
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AFF Politics Core

UTNIF Politics CoreAFF

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

Politics Link Answers

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core PC Not Key 2 Immigration

But this turnaround has very little to do with Obamas

influence his political mandate, as it were. It has almost entirely

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core PC Not Key/Winners Win

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core 1arBush Doesnt Prove

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core 1arWinners Win

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Climate Thumper

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Employer Mandate

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core No Political Capital

Obama is wasting his political capitalHe has no persuasive power

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Link Turn/Shield

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Public Link Turn

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Leahy Supports

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core No Link

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core No Lobby/K of Backlash

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Energy Independence

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core No Obama

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Bipartisanship

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Link Non-Unique

Obama committed to cooperation now.

Link InevitableObama seeking cooperation over oil in the next 6 months

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core Bipartisan

the activity took place behind the scenes,

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics

AFF Politics Core

University of Texas National Institute in Forensics