TODAY: Fiorina Gets a Closer Look | Hillary Defends Bankruptcy Vote | Shutdown Drama Heightens | Breakfast Sides
MORNING MESSAGE
Hillary
Clinton’s hawkish stance is a portrait of restraint in contrast to the
adolescent muscle-flexing and locker room taunts that mark the foreign policy
exchanges of the Republican presidential contenders in their most recent debate.
The competitive bluster got so fierce that Donald “I am the most militaristic
person” Trump turned out to be one of the least unhinged in the claque. After 14
years of costly, destabilizing war in the Middle East, these candidates pledge,
you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Fiorina Gets a Closer Look
Carly
Fiorina would be a worse candidate than Romney, says NYT’s Timothy Egan:
“…she’s a terrible candidate in the age of income inequality and a battered
middle class. Mitt Romney was pummeled for investing in companies that close
American plants and ship jobs overseas. Fiorina, as chief executive of
Hewlett-Packard, went him one better — firing thousands of people, while being
rewarded for failure. She is the embodiment of the unfairness, the rigged game
that hurts so many average working people.”
NYT’s
Josh Barro looks at Fiorina’s business record: “…Mrs. Fiorina’s strategy to
quickly grow H.P.’s top line was to buy another large company, Compaq Computer.
That deal was widely criticized at the time because it got H.P. a big increase
in sales but little profit … Hewlett-Packard’s profits in 2005 were $2.4
billion, a billion less than in the year Mrs. Fiorina started as C.E.O. That is
a key reason she was fired.”
NYT’s
Paul Krugman slams GOP debate: “…even if you like the broad thrust of modern
Republican policies, it should worry you that the men and woman on that stage
are clearly living in a world of fantasies and fictions. And some seem willing
to advance their ambitions with outright lies.”
Hillary Defends Bankruptcy Vote
Hillary
Clinton defends 2001 bankruptcy vote by citing Biden. WSJ: “…Mrs. Clinton
said that the bill was pending when she arrived in the Senate in 2001 and wanted
some changes to protect alimony and child support payments. ‘So I negotiated
those changes and then the people who had been handling the bill said, “Well if
we take your changes you have to support it.” … And it was Vice President Biden
who was the senator from Delaware and the Republican co-sponsor that I was
talking with, so I said I’d support it even though I’d opposed it before.'”
Sanders
plots to go beyond Iowa and NH. The Hill: “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plans
to pour resources into South Carolina to improve his standing with black voters
in the state to punch a hole in Hillary Clinton’s electoral firewall … Sanders
plans to boost his numbers by financing a major grassroots campaign introducing
himself to minority voters in the state.”
Shutdown Drama Heightens
Dems
united on plan to keep government open. The Hill: “President Obama and
Democratic leaders in Congress want to pass a clean, stopgap bill to avert a
government shutdown and allow negotiators more time to reach a long-term budget
deal … Reid said that he is prepared ‘to do something meaningful with spending’
on a broader funding deal after the short-term measure is passed. But he would
not reveal how much additional spending he wants.”
Republican
leaders try to appease conservatives with abortion votes. AP: “Unclear is
whether a vote Friday to defund Planned Parenthood and other steps will be
enough to placate conservatives … At a closed-door GOP meeting Thursday,
Republicans were shown party polling data that showed most Americans haven’t
seen the videos and that more Americans associate Planned Parenthood with
women’s health than with abortions.”
Pelosi
and Boehner confab, to no avail. Politico: “The California Democrat told
reporters that the two sides were no closer to zeroing in on a budget deal after
the meeting and there are no current plans for the two leaders to meet
again.”
Breakfast Sides
Missouri
prevents cities from raising minimum wage. WSJ: “…the Republican-led
Legislature late Wednesday prohibited communities from setting their own pay
floors by overriding a veto of Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon … state lawmakers from
Alabama to Michigan are now moving to strip cities of the power to establish
their own rates, saying such steps create confusion for businesses and have
effects well outside urban centers.”
Bipartisan
Senate bill targets Obamacare tax. The Hill: “The legislation by Sens. Dean
Heller (R-Nev.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) helps build momentum for the
years-old campaign to eliminate the [“Cadillac”] tax, which has already earned
bipartisan support in the House … The Cadillac Tax will go into effect in 2018
and impact any employers who offer health insurance plans that costs more than
$10,200 a year for individuals or $27,450 a year for families. Under the law,
employers will have to pay 40 percent of the cost above those limits.”
Progressive
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