Burning Down the House

It's a little late for a State of the Union reaction post, and I doubt my opinions on it will be revelatory or particularly controversial. He did an excellent job, as usual, of making me feel all warm and fuzzy and confident, a feeling that will last, oh, well, probably until it becomes abundantly clear that he has abandoned health care reform entirely in favour of pointless pandering. Oh, wait...

So really there's not much to note about the speech other than the well-known fact that Obama's rhetoric rarely seems to match the sausage he manages to grind out. Two days later, however, he traveled to Baltimore for a Q&A session at the House Republican retreat, and CSPAN was there to record the whole thing. Definitely worth watching the whole thing, both for the surprising level of candor with which Obama discusses his situation and for the civility with which he was treated by the group of raving baboons that currently occupies the right side of congress.

The money line, for the impatient, is here:



Bolshevik plot! Hey-o!

Elsewhere, Obama makes two particularly shrewd points that did a hell of a lot more to restore my hope-boner than the SOTU did. At one point, a congressperson whined that Obama was being mean to the poor Republicans by saying they had no ideas and that he was ignoring some plan they had developed that would supposedly cover everyone and not cost a dime. His response was to point out how little sense it would make for him to reject such a proposal, both from a policy angle and from a political one. Why, as a pragmatic, non-ideological type of guy, would he opt for a more expensive and less successful reform bill during a period of intense budget strain and declining approval? Of course, the reality is that the Republican proposals are pure snake-oil, put forward only to provide the party the ability to pretend it is interested in the debate over HCR in any real way, and Obama very gently and indirectly points this out.

Later, when pressed more on the general theme of the evening, why Obama won't listen to the Republicans, the president made an interesting observation. He noted that, by demonizing him so much, House Republicans have tied their own hands. They can't, without facing a nutty-ass primary challenge a la Rubio, Hayworth, or Specter, cooperate in any way with the Democrats or the White House. By accusing him of wanting to cram government into every orifice of the American public, they can't support him or influence him even when they may want to. As a result, there is no logical reason for Obama or Pelosi to even try to negotiate with them. It would have been nice if Obama had known this maybe 11 months ago, but whatever, he's totally right. Obstructionism and cries of socialism may fill the campaign coffers and energize the Fox News mouth-breathers, but they certainly limit the already limited effect a minority party can have on legislation. It was heartening to hear the big man say it himself, although it remains to be seen whether he'll take this hard-earned nugget of political wisdom and make something of it.

Another Reason Banks Aren't Lending

Let me shamelessly block-quote Felix Salmon block-quoting "a California banker":

If you’re a bank with a relatively healthy balance sheet with adequate capital, (like us)you want to maintain surplus capital in order to stay on the FDIC’s list of banks they can transfer the loans and deposits from a failed institution into.

This is a home run for the acquiring bank and far more of an instant benefit than any new lending.

The problem here is that healthy banks end up competing with each other to have the largest capital surplus and therefore the greatest chance of being anointed in this manner by the FDIC. If everybody was lending, the FDIC would still have to place failed banks’ assets and deposits with someone. But instead we get the opposite corner solution, where nobody is lending — except, presumably, for banks which are close to failure and need all the interest income they can get.

On the list of reasons why banks aren't passing the easy buck onto potential borrowers, I suspect that this particular prisoner's dillema ranks significantly below, say, a dirth of demand on the one hand, and extreme risk aversion on the supply side. But it's still kind of an interesting situation. Off the top of my head, I suppose the FDIC could start charging higher premiums to banks with surplus capital over a certain level. That is, if they even have the power to do that. And if that makes any sense; it sure sounds counter-intuitive. Thoughts?

Either way, if the goal is to get banks lending again, additional hurdles/disincentives like these probably don't help.

1937 Comes Early

It was last week that President Obama allowed himself to be seen in public with Paul Volcker. Lion wrote about it. The wilted flower that was once called Hope sprang anew upon the calluses of my heart. He say's that he's changed, I thought. And this time he means it.

Questions over whether the proposal to impose meaningful regulation on the financial industry had been inspired by post-Massachusetts panic seemed insignificant compared to what the development might portend for the future of Treasury policy. To quote from the best:

If Volcker ousts, or at least chastises, the Summers-Geithner axis, it will make for a very different White House, and not just because, at 6'7", he could probably outbox a gorilla.

What a difference a week makes. Today it looks like that gorilla has just beaten the teeth out of the ephemeral shade that was once our dream for a progressive economic agenda. First the facts if you haven't already seen them:

US President Barack Obama is to announce a three-year partial spending freeze aimed at reducing the country's $1.4tn (£860bn) budget deficit...Officials have told US media that defence, some health care programmes and the massive economic stimulus package will be unaffected. Critics said the planned savings, expected to cut no more than $15bn off next year's budget, were insufficient. But officials said the plan would result in savings of about $250bn during the next 10 years. (BBC)

Ignoring the politics for just a moment, this policy makes absolutely no sense to me. Maybe Obama thinks that America will emerge from the recession this year, but most are forcasting persistent unemployment for many more months to come, perhaps extending over the tenure of the freeze (and certainly exacerbated by it either way). And with the majority of state governments deep in the red, for economic, political, and simple moral considerations alike, this is exactly the wrong time to cut spending on education, transportation, and infrastructure. I say this not only as a Californian; so far this year 39 states have faced mid-year budgetary short-falls.

But then there's the question of where these cuts will actually be made. (It goes without saying that future tax-increases are out of the question). I won't argue that U.S. federal deficits are structural and do need addressing. Cutting into the meat of the budget anywhere seems like really bad timing to me, but I also imagine that there is plenty of fat to be trimmed. So what's being frozen?

As it turns out, the more important question is: what isn't being frozen?

Obama is planning to call for a three-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending, which means everything except Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Defense Department, Homeland Security, and the VA–that is, everything except the vast majority of the budget. This at a time when the unemployment rate is at 10%. (Baseline Scenario)

Which is to say that as a serious attempt at deficit reduction, cutting $250 billion over a decade (about 5% of the accumulated debt forecast for that period) doesn't make the sufficiently big cut. With the added benefit that this is sure to be a kick to the ribs of the overall economy at a time when the overall economy is already in traction (to say nothing of the fact that, as far as I can tell, our government is still in a pretty good position in terms of its ability to borrow), I'll say again: this policy makes absolutely no sense to me. Or to Brad DeLong:

As one deficit-hawk journalist of my acquaintance says this evening, this is a perfect example of fundamental unseriousness: rather than make proposals that will actually tackle the long-term deficit--either through future tax increases triggered by excessive deficits or through future entitlement spending caps triggered by excessive deficits--come up with a proposal that does short-term harm to the economy without tackling the deficit in any serious and significant way. (GROT)

Unlike most of the things President Obama has done (or not done or proposed to do or not do) that I disagree with, I can't find the logical political angle here. Compromising on the stimulus or taking his hands out of the healthcare negotiations or keeping Guantanamo open are choices I at least understand from the cynical logic of electoral or legislative politics. But I don't understand where this is coming from. Concern over the national debt polls high. But that over unemployment polls higher. And trading more economic hurt for a little fiscal discipline isn't going to win any voters if your so-called discipline is, in the words of Brad Delong, nothing but "Dingbat Kabuki."

But Tyler Cowen is feeling generous:

There's not much to say in terms of the economic issues, the real lesson is that politics is more constrained than many people think. Berating Obama for his lack of courage or his "failure to get tough" is simply denying or postponing this fundamental realization. (Marginal Revolution)

First of all, I'm not even sure I understand what this means since Obama isn't proposing the freeze in concession to any immediate focused pressure. So I'll agree that he isn't "failing to get tough" by proactively making a Republican talking-point a part of his economic plan. But even assuming that a debate over the debt and deficits were to be the logical end-results of the HCR fiasco--and this is what I assume Cowen means, that Obama is reigning in that old time Socialism out of political necessity--being realistic about the viability of a particular proposal is not the same thing as preemptively caving to the opposition. Even if you know you're going to lose, in politics, the theater of the fight might be worth having.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. The State of the Union comes Wednesday. We can access the damage then.

Still Fresh, One Year On

I'm not sure how exactly, but I thought this would be in keeping with the anniversarial spirit.

Happy Birthday Chorography.

Retrospecticus

So it's been a year. For definite, congratulations are in order: there are many, many ideas that we as a group have considered, entertained, or even briefly pursued before abandoning, and while there have been long dead stretches here at the Chorography, we're somehow still pumping away (albeit with the consistency and frequency of a faulty pacemaker). I am proud of us for this, even if it is a flawed accomplishment: in a year of flawed accomplishments and significant disappointments, both political and personal, it's nice to know we've kept up with the zeitgeist.

In saying that, I don't want to diminish what we've accomplished here. We've managed to set up and maintain a space to vent our spleens at and with each other from afar, something we used to do up close. I think I've become a better writer over the last year as a result, and I don't think I'm alone. It's just that this little retrospective, which I had originally intended to be fairly analytical and dispassionate, has gotten kind of personal. The more I look back over what we've written, the more I see the directions our lives have taken in the last year. There are the obvious lulls in posting, where one or all of us was in some sort of big transition or trip or move; the frustrated rants, some of which only flimsily cover up something larger and deeper; and the long, obviously time-consuming posts, the kind one could only put together with some real unemployment on one's hands. This isn't to say we weren't writing real good stuff, the kind we should scavenge and poach from mercilessly, just that it's not easy to look at a post from, say, August, knowing where we all were at the time (physically, on a lake; mentally, in a rut), and not think more about that than about the contents of the post.

Anyway, we've done good things here. We should keep doing good things here. This blog is a good thing for us as friends and a good thing for us as thinkers. We should engage each other more on the blog than we have so far: our opinions tend to converge on most things but when they diverge it has made for some solid stuff (see Lion v. everyone on New York v. Montreal). We should start thinking about, in a glacial way, how we can (and whether we even want to) make this something people who aren't us will read. Most importantly, we should just write more. If you look back through the months, there are long dry spells followed by sudden bursts of heavy posting. My guess is that, when other people are posting, we're more inclined to do the same. When they aren't, we aren't. Kind of a Catch-22, but the only real solution is to just start posting more. We've done a, if not amazing, then at least admirable, job of keeping this sucker afloat during a turbulent and confusing period in our lives. Who knows, maybe it gets easier from here.

1 year!

I just want to say that, in the middle of this sudden spate of solid posts, we passed our one-year anniversary for the blog a couple weeks ago, around the time that Ben and I were rolling around drunk in Seoul and I assume you all were doing the same in saner places. Congrats, all! I am going to, next week at some point, write up a one-year retrospective. In the meantime, if you can think back that far, see if you can find some of your favorite posts from other folks and we'll kick 'em back up for a re-read.

Spaketh I in haste?

Maybe Obama is not the limp-wristed, effeminate, chickenhearted, yellow-bellied yes-man that I lampooned him for being a mere handful of (figurative) moments earlier. It only took one loss in the senate to prompt a complete reversal of his economic policies to date. We have been promised a new Glass-Steagall, a ban on mergers and takeovers in the financial industry, and a bank fee to the tune of $90 billion (over ten years, that is). That's a good start, one he should've led with when he, you know, started.

But aside from bombastic promises to what has finally been recognized as an upset electorate, there is something mentioned in brief that is far more interesting. The separation of speculative and deposit-taking institutions is going under the nom-de-guerre "The Volcker Rule," in honor of Paul Volcker, who flew to Washington to discuss it with the president. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism sees it as the most promising development of Obama's 'new' hardline stance, too. Volcker, who beat stagflation and put monetary policy on a much sounder footing than it had been in the 70's, is a giant in every sense of the word. He is also no friend of finance's--at a conference in Sussex early last month, he unzipped his pants and peed in the face of his banking audience by asserting that "the 'single most important' contribution in the last 25 years has been automatic telling machines, which he said had at least proved 'useful.'" The Telegraph goes on to report,

Echoing FSA chairman Lord Turner's comments that banks are "socially useless", Mr Volcker told delegates who had been discussing how to rebuild the financial system to "wake up". He said credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations had taken the economy "right to the brink of disaster" and added that the economy had grown at "greater rates of speed" during the 1960s without such products.

If Volcker ousts, or at least chastises, the Summers-Geithner axis, it will make for a very different White House, and not just because at 6'7" he could probably outbox a gorilla. As we've seen, Obama is extremely pliant vis-a-vis his advisers, which thusfar that has been a severe liability. Volcker might just make it a blessing.

A Podcast That Will Blow Your Mind

Another flash post:

If anyone has the time and interest, I just finished listening to a two dueling lectures of the journalist Misha Glenny (the author of McMafia, which I believe you have read Dave, though I have not) and the former prosecutor Michael Hartmann, who is now an adviser to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. I recommend it. The title of the lecture, The War On Drugs: An Upper or Downer for Development?, (British humor is so dry and sophisticated) characterizes the subject a little too narrowly. It's really a much broader legalization versus prohibition argument and, more importantly, it's a really interesting one.

Leave a comment if any of you get around to listening to it. I'd be curious to know what you think.

To Top It Off

Carrying on this proud micro-trend of ripping posts from TPM, I just wanted to make sure everyone saw this development before it gets completely overshadowed by healthcare's umpteenth round of horrendously unsatisfying hand-wringing:

In a ruling that has major implications for how elections are funded, the Supreme Court has struck down a key campaign-finance restriction that bars corporations and unions from pouring money into political ads.

The long-awaited 5-4 ruling, in the Citizens United v. FEC case, presents advocates of regulation with a major challenge in limiting the flow of corporate money into campaigns, and potentially opens the door for unrestricted amounts of corporate money to flow into American politics.

In the case at issue, Citizens United (CU), a conservative advocacy group, was challenging a ruling by the FEC that barred it from airing a negative movie about Hillary Clinton. CU received corporate donations and the movie advocated the defeat of a political candidate within 60 days of an election. CU argued that the FEC ruling violated its freedom of speech, and that the relevant provision of McCain-Feingold was unconstitutional.

The court overruled a 1990 decision that found that government can stop corporations from spending money on ads that urge the election or defeat of a candidate. It's rare for the Supreme Court to overturn a precedent arrived at so recently.

A bit further down, the article carries the following block quote from the majority opinion:

Distinguishing wealthy individuals from corporations based on the latter's special advantages of e.g., limited liability, does not suffice to allow laws prohibiting speech. It is irrelevant for First Amendment purposes that corporate funds may "have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas." Austin, supra, at 660. All speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.

Which is to say, distinguishing a living breathing human being from a legal entity that we have long since collectively decided ought to enjoy the civil rights of a mortal citizen does not suffice to prohibit the latter from drowning any candidate to the left of Richard Nixon with dollar-sign embossed cloth bags of gold. But don't worry, you on the other side will always have the economic might of the unions behind you.

As much as it pains me to write it, with this Court, I wouldn't hold out much hope for that Leftist-wave, Lion.

And so does this

Another repost from TPM, but this time I'll agree to simply excerpt:

National Democratic politicians, and modern Democratic Presidents in particular, have been acutely conscious of the dominance of organized interests within the party. This, I think, is why Carter, Clinton and now Obama have so often come off as men trying to tip-toe their way through complex situations without making anyone important to them really unhappy. The majority of Americans who are outside Democratic Party politics and "the groups" look at this and see weakness, even fecklessness. They also see an unwillingness to listen to them, which is only partly wrong. National Democrats do listen, but lack confidence that acting on what they hear from the public rather than "the groups" will produce victory.

...

George W. Bush's unpopularity was Barack Obama's greatest political asset during the 2008 campaign, and nothing else was even close. No one wanted to be known as a Bush Republican; even today, Republicans do not accuse Obama of wrecking the great work Bush did as President. They know no one would believe that. Obama hasn't used this asset at all, not really. As far as he and his team have been concerned, there is no such thing as a Bush Republican. Opposition to health care reform is not the Bush Republican position; support for bonuses on Wall Street is not what Bush would do. There are no references to Bush incompetence, none to Bush corruption. If Bush had left office with 70% approval, or 50% approval, or even 40%, the silence of Obama and the Democrats about Bush would be sound politics. Then again, if any of these things had been true, John McCain would be President now.

The Brown victory, and the performance of the Democratic Party more generally, has me more and more convinced that there not be any opposition to Republican politics until either a new leftist party emerges or, and this requires fewer parts blue moon, a new wave of Democrats replace the older defeatists who are rotated in and out of power now. And I don't mean new like Obama. I had no faith in him from the beginning because it was clear that the swollen, Wagnerian rhetoric we were bludgeoned with was employed purposefully to distract from the fact that he was a non-entity, a compromiser who was skilled at verbal artifice--he was a lawyer, after all--and little else. No, a new generation of Democrats has to be hard-line: it has to start from the assumption that it will win and pursue with unyielding aggression the leftist policies that the United States requires in order to continue being a functioning democratic state.

I will also go ahead and say that I still wish McCain had won in 2008. If that had been the case, it would've been the Republicans who were tasked with explaining the deterioration of the economy that their politics precipitated. The Democrats could've wiped the floor with them in 2012 on a much stronger basis and maybe with a more substantive candidate, though who, from the sorry ranks of the modern party, that would be, I haven't the foggiest. And it isn't as if we would be missing any glorious Democratic legislative triumphs. We largely have a moderate Republican administration as it is.

That says it all

Reposted from TPM, written by an anonymous Democratic Senate staffer:

I certainly wouldn't want to indicate I have any unique insight on how everyone feels around this place but I thought you might be interested in how one Senate staffer is feeling.

My background is like probably the majority of staffers I know. I came to DC, from a far superior climate and quality of life, because I wanted to save the world. I arrived, and took a job in the House, at what I still view as the nadir of Congress - in 1996. Republicans had recently taken over Congress and had 230 seats in the House and 52 in the Senate. Democrats were in a state of shock and we watched (because that was essentially all we could do) in horror as they systematically went after nearly every institution of civil governance culminating in nearly removing the President from office via an entirely trumped-up charge. They had destroyed the Democrats in 1994 because they simply couldn't deliver - the BTU tax went down, health care went down, and finally the Crime Bill failed because it had such laughably wacky ideas as "midnight basketball" as a crime prevention measure (something with is widely approved of today and is completely noncontroversial). As a young LA, it was amazingly dispiriting. Literally nothing we proposed could get passed - we couldn't even get votes. Every bill came to the floor under a closed rule so we couldn't propose amendments and our Senate colleagues faced a full amendment tree on every bill such that unless they had Republican patron they couldn't get votes either. Kennedy fought like hell for things like minimum wage and sometimes could arm-wrestle a procedural vote win out of them but things would just die in the hands of the Hammer in the House. Eventually, my boss got fed up and retired and I went over to the Administration where I thought I might be able to get more accomplished.

Even there, in a Democratic Administration, we faced constant battles as anything remotely beneficial to the public or in keeping with our mission was forcibly outsourced by the Congress or investigated into near-paralysis. The Republican Majority in the House had steadily eroded so that by the end of the Clinton years they had only a 5 seat cushion (223) in the House, but their strong majority in the Senate (55) kept them firmly in control. Then, when Bush took over in the wake of the most disputable election imaginable, the political appointees flooded in and began reversing policies (including policies promulgated by previous Republican administrations) as if they were exercising the overwhelming mandate of the people. Republicans barely kept the House with 221 seats and only held on to the Senate via Cheney's tie breaking vote on the organizing resolution. I left to start a family.

Despite Jeffords' flip, and the razor-thin majority in the House, the Democrats dealt no significant losses to President Bush and his agenda went essentially unchecked, and nominations were processed efficiently and quickly (after all, the people had spoken!). The only arguable exception I can think of right now is that the Administration was unable to push through drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge but they actually did put it on reconciliation, they just lost too many Republicans to win. I returned to being in the Minority on the Hill, on the Senate side this time and as staff to an important Committee, and Republicans now had a 51-seat Majority in the Senate and had strengthened in the House to a mighty 229 seats. We fought valiantly to slow them down but were unsuccessful in stopping a one-sided energy bill, escalation of a needless war in Iraq, and continued erosion of the social safety net and de-funding of civil institutions through tax cuts for the well-off. We got occasional fig leaves, and maybe could get a witness or two included in a hearing, but were essentially not a part of the final discussions to put together bills. I dreamed that if only we could get two Senate seat takeaways, then we could finally take the reigns back - after all, poll after poll showed the American people agreed with us on nearly every issue. In 2004 we would surely break through to the public - we had neutralized them on their central issue by nominating a war hero and people were desperate for health care and education reforms. We had moved away from that scary Howard Dean fellow and were now proposing only modest reforms to health care, more tax cuts, and deficit reduction (don't worry, never at the expense of the Pentagon!). How could we lose? Republicans strengthened their majorities to 55 Senators and 232 House Members and I almost lost my job as the now-overwhelming Republican Majority in the Senate increased their allocation of the office space and staff salaries. Now a majority was a faraway dream and the best we could hope for was a few sympathetic Republicans on a few issues that might help us at least expose what they were doing (and we did manage to beat back drilling in Arctic again).

Unexpectedly, public mood did finally begin to sour on the wars and deficits agenda in 2006 and we were able to eek out victories in MT and VA so that we could take a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate (including a dicey vote from Lieberman) and a massive 233-202 Majority in the House. Of course, we'd have to cautious and trim our sails a bit since Bush still was President and we had several skittish votes in the Caucus, but the American People were giving us a shot. We suffered some disappointments but we did about as well as could be expected in the Senate, but at least we were making progress and, though I had to trim my ambitions a bit, I was finally writing provisions that were becoming law. On balance, it was a good Congress, but I dreamed of having big majorities like 55 Senators so that we could really do the stuff we've all been waiting for.

A wave election hit us in 2008 where we not only had overwhelming majorities of 59 seats in the Senate (once Republicans finally got around to letting us seat Franken) and 257 seats in the House (returning us to the same power level as when we ruled the House with inpugnity in 1992-3) but, most importantly, a President who was explicitly elected on an agenda of "change." It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to wrench the wheel away from the abyss and really deliver on our promises. It was disheartening when it seemed that Reid was allowing McConnell's disingenuous narrative of "it's always taken 60 votes to get anything done" to take hold, but we were later even saved from that when Specter switched. But it seems we've spent the entire year moving our own goalposts farther away. Things have gotten so bad that in roaming the halls today it feels exactly as if we lost the Majority last night.

The worst is that I can't help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They're afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That's the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

I believe President Clinton provided some crucial insight when he said, "people would rather be with someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right." It's not that people are uninterested in who's right or wrong, it's that people will only follow leaders who seem to actually believe in what they are doing. Democrats have missed this essential fact.

The stimulus bill in the spring showed us what was coming. In the face of a historic economic crisis, Democrats negotiated against themselves at the outset and subsequently yielded to absurd demands from self-described "moderates" to trim the package to a clearly inadequate level. No one made any rational argument about why a lower level was better. It would have been trivial to write "claw-back" provisions if the stimulus turned out to be too much or we could have done a rescission this year to give these moderates their victory, but none of this was on the table. We essentially looked like we didn't know what the right answer was so we just kinda went for what we could get. This formula was repeated in spades in both the Climate and Health Care debacles.

This is my life and I simply can't answer the fundamental question: "what do Democrats stand for?" Voters don't know, and we can't make the case, so they're reacting exactly as you'd expect (just as they did in 1994, 2000, and 2004). We either find the voice to answer that question and exercise the strongest majority and voter mandate we've had since Watergate, or we suffer a bloodbath in November. History shows we're likely to choose the latter.

Although I realize this is far too long to publish, if you do decide to use any of it, please keep my anonymity. Just in case I'm wrong and there is more good to do yet.

I have something substantive to post, but more time is needed to polish it so that it might meet our exacting standards. I'll try to get it ready by Friday.

Waiting for the end of the world

Huffington Post, via Political Wire:

Congressional negotiators and White House officials are moving forward with plans to add the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell to the upcoming defense authorization bill, Democratic sources tell the Huffington Post.

In Congress, members are being whipped to ensure that the votes will be there for passage, should the legislation be placed in the bill. At this juncture, aides say, the prospects look good. Meanwhile, a source close to the White House says the president has instructed the Defense Department that he believes the repeal of DADT should be placed in the authorization bill.

However, disagreements could emerge when it comes to crafting the actual legislative language, over which Defense Secretary Robert Gates will wield his influence. And at this juncture, few of the offices working on the issue said they were willing to take passage as a fait accompli.