Washington Report: Updates from Capitol Hill

With Stevens’ Retirement, Obama to Name New Justice

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens announced on Friday that he will retire at the end of the court’s term in June or July. At 89, Stevens is its oldest and longest-serving judge and is also considered to be the leader of its liberal wing.

In a letter to Obama, Stevens wrote: “Having concluded that it would be in the best interests of the Court to have my successor appointed and confirmed well in advance of the commencement of the Court’s next term, I shall retire from active service.”

The timing of Stevens’ announcement leaves enough time for the president to name a successor and for Senate Democrats, who have a 59-vote majority, to hold confirmation hearings and a vote before the court’s next term begins in October, according to the Associated Press.

Now Obama has a second opportunity to fill a Supreme Court seat, he will have to act more gingerly than he did with the appointment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. He will likely pick someone who is as liberal as Sotomayor, but perhaps less liberal than Stevens.

“He’s got to play his political cards right, which is to say he will want to try to get someone who will have a reasonable chance of getting through the Senate, so he won’t go in a really liberal direction,” predicts University of California-Berkeley political scientist Bruce Cain.

Indeed, with the November mid-term elections looming, Obama can ill-afford another bitter partisan fight, particularly so soon after the battle over healthcare reform, which has left many Democratic lawmakers feeling scarred. Friday morning, Rep. Bert Stupak (D-Michigan), who helped negotiate the abortion compromise in the healthcare bill, which helped it get the requisite number of votes needed for passage, also announced his retirement.

“Things have only gotten more bitter since [Sotomayor’s nomination]. The fact that Stupak decided not to run because of the vitriolic environment, the death threats to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shows we’re clearly in a very bitter period,” says Cain. “Obama realizes that the Republicans are smelling a potential midterm victory or gains, and he doesn’t want to give them any more ammunition.”

Cain added that Obama has to ensure that whomever he nominates is thoroughly researched and vetted and if the process is not handled properly, it will negatively impact the perception of him as president.

Possible candidates to replace Stevens include Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 49, and federal appellate judges Merrick Garland, 57, in Washington and Diane Wood, 59, in Chicago, writes the AP.

Cain pointed to Kagan as the right sort of choice, because she is centrist and has impeccable academic credentials. It would be very difficult for Republicans to characterize her as a someone who’s wildly liberal or undeserving of the robe. Wood also is considered more centrist.

Stevens was nominated to the bench by President Gerald Ford in 1975. Since then, he has often issued rulings with court’s liberal-leaning jurists. Most famously, he led the dissenters in the case of Bush v. Gore over the 2000 presidential election.
DOE Invests in Science and Technical Research at HBCUs

Nine historically black colleges and universities in South Carolina and Georgia have received nearly $9 million in grants from the Department of Energy to develop academic programs in science and technical research fields that will integrate coursework, DOE field work, and applied research., the White House announced earlier this week.

“This important partnership will provide the education and training opportunities students need to become the next generation of environmental scientists and engineers,” said Inés Triay, the DOE’s assistant secretary for environmental management, during the award presentation in Columbia, South Carolina, on Wednesday.

Women and minorities are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. In a Bayer Corp. survey

of minority chemists and chemical engineers, many said the reason for the lack of diversity is because they are discouraged from pursuing studies and careers in these fields. The survey found that inadequate science and math programs in low-income school districts (75%); stereotypes that say STEM isn’t for girls or minorities (66%); and the education costs (53%) are the top three contributors to the underrepresentation. In addition, respondents cited managerial bias (40%), company/organizational/institutional bias (38%),  little or no access to networking opportunities (35%), and a lack of promotional/advancement opportunities (35%).

The participating institutions will have “the extraordinary opportunity to use this federal investment to train the scientists, mathematicians and engineers who can step in to meet the growing demand for new diverse talent,” Said House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-South Carolina).

The following HBCU institutions are receiving awards:

Allen University, Columbia, SC – $1,000,000
Benedict College, Columbia, SC – $ 1,180,944
Claflin University, Orangeburg, SC – $999,018
Clinton Junior College, Rock Hill, SC – $837,049
Denmark Technical College, Denmark, SC – $789,440
Morris College, Sumter, SC – $987,793
Paine College, Augusta, GA – $ 992,889
South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, SC- $ 1,197,987
Voorhees College, Denmark, SC – $982,387

Virginia Governor Issues Confederate History Month Mea Culpa

April is Autism Awareness Month, Celebrate Diversity Month, and also Confederate History Month. A number of states recognize the latter, but the state that’s had people buzzing this week is Virginia.

After quietly restoring Confederate History Month–without including the anti-slavery language that makes such proclamations only slightly less rebarbative–Virginia’s Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell was forced this week to admit he’d blundered. He issued a statement conceding that he’d made a “major omission” and inserted a paragraph in the proclamation acknowledging that slavery was, among other things, “an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights.”

The day

before his mea culpa, McDonnell defended the proclamation, saying that slavery wasn’t “significant” enough for inclusion and that the document would help boost tourism. The state’s last Republican governor, Jim Gilmore, was also the last to issue a similar proclamation before McDonnell reintroduced it last week. Gilmore did, however, include anti-slavery language that read: “Had there been no slavery, there would have been no war.”

So, what was McDonnell thinking?

Michael Fauntroy, a George Mason University political scientist, says that people sometimes forget how far-right the governor actually leans and that he was simply pandering to the GOP’s conservative base.

“He was far more concerned about sort of repaying a debt and engaging in important symbolism that is important to those who support the notion of the Confederacy than he is to any backlash that may occur,” said Fauntroy. “There are a lot of people who believe the narrative that the Civil War was just about this amorphous concept called state’s rights, when the right in question was slavery.”

Immediately after the original proclamation was issued, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine denounced McDonnell.

“A failure to acknowledge the central role of slavery in the Confederacy and deeming insignificant the reprehensible transgression of moral standards of liberty and equality that slavery represented is simply not acceptable in the America of the 21st century,” Kaine wrote in a statement.

Interestingly, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who is black, has been silent on the issue. Granted, he’s been dealing with his own embarrassments but McDonnell’s misstep certainly won’t help Steele in his efforts to open up the GOP tent to include more minorities.

Next in Line: Financial Regulatory Reform

With healthcare reform out of the way, lawmakers will now turn their attention to President Barack Obama’s next domestic priority when they return to Washington next week–financial services industry reform. The administration hopes to get a final bill passed by Memorial Day.

“We think this is picking up momentum,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin told reporters at a briefing this week. “There’s a clear understanding of the importance of enacting legislation sooner rather than later.”

The House of Representatives has already passed a reform bill. Before breaking for recess, the Senate Banking Committee passed a bill by a vote of 13 to 10, without a single Republican in support of it. It now must be considered and voted on by the full Senate before it can be reconciled with the House version.

Black lawmakers are particularly anxious to implement financial reforms because they represent some of the communities that have been hardest hit by mortgage brokers that have taken advantage of borrowers who didn’t understand what they were getting into.

After staging a mini coup in December, ten Congressional Black Caucus members who sit on the House Financial Services Committee were able to get the committee to include in the House bill an amendment that would establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion at each of the seven financial regulatory agencies to ensure that the voices of minority consumers are heard.

Details surrounding the creation of a consumer financial protection agency (CFPA) are still being negotiated. The bill introduced by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) calls for the agency to be placed within the Federal Reserve Bank. The House bill would make it a stand-alone agency. The House bill also exempts automobile dealers from CFPA regulation. Wolin says the administration opposes exemptions for certain lenders and wants to see it stripped from the bill. He also said that the administration would fight any efforts by Republicans or lobbyists to water down the Senate banking committee’s bill.

“The president made clear that it’s strong enough, that we would oppose efforts to weaken it,” Wolin said.