Business Lobby and Tea Party

The Tea Party does not have a presence in Indonesia, where the term evokes cups of orange pekoe and sweet cakes rather than angry citizens in “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirts.
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Andrew Langer, president of the Institute for Liberty, in a video on the Consumer Prosperity channel on YouTube, compared a United States tariff on Asian paper to Britain's colonial trade policies.
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But a Tea Party group in the United States, the Institute for Liberty, has vigorously defended the freedom of a giant Indonesian paper company to sell its wares to Americans without paying tariffs. The institute set up Web sites, published reports and organized a petition drive attacking American businesses, unions and environmentalists critical of the company, Asia Pulp & Paper.

Last fall, the institute’s president, Andrew Langer, had himself videotaped on Long Wharf in Boston holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence as he compared Washington’s proposed tariff on paper from Indonesia and China to Britain’s colonial trade policies in 1776.

Tariff-free Asian paper may seem an unlikely cause for a nonprofit Tea Party group. But it is in keeping with a succession of pro-business campaigns — promoting commercial space flight, palm oil imports and genetically modified alfalfa — that have occupied the Institute for Liberty’s recent agenda.

Biden Heads To Hill As Roadmap For Government Funding Resolution Emerges

Vice President Joseph Biden is meeting with Senate Democratic leadership Wednesday night in an effort to get officials on the same page concerning budget negotiations and plot out the next, crucial steps in talks with House Republicans.

The Vice President’s visit comes as a once dire-looking outlook over the state of funding discussions has turned a bit brighter. Democratic aides on Capitol Hill say that the two political parties now only stand a mere $6 billion apart on the size of spending cuts they will support and have an informal process in place to close that gap

According to a top Senate Democratic aide, the party has submitted a plan to House GOP leadership identifying an additional $20 billion in cuts it is willing to make on top of the $10 billion in cuts it has already passed in the form of stop-gap funding measures. The breakdown of the cuts is roughly 75 percent discretionary spending and 25 percent mandatory spending, mainly from Medicare subsidies.

The party is now awaiting a similar proposal from House Republicans that would pinpoint $36 billion in cuts that they prefer. “At the point that these are ready” the aide said, “the appropriations committee staff from the [Republican] House and the [Democratic] Senate would then take the two offers and mesh them such that a little was taken from a, a bit from b, and the final top-line number was somewhere in between.” The end amount will be roughly around the $32 billion in cuts that House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) initially proposed in his continuing resolution.

Biden, the aide added, had been “helping to reach this understanding with phone calls to the GOP side.”

That a rough roadmap for resolution of the funding difference had emerged certainly provides a more upbeat backdrop than other recent reports, which had negotiations between the parties essentially dissolved. But while “all parties were now back at the table" -- as another Senate aide put it -- resolution still remains far off.

For starters, the first Senate aide relayed that the party has not yet received a proposal from House Republicans detailing their $36 billion in cuts. With Tea Party protesters descending upon the Hill, the concern among Democrats is that the longer Boehner takes to submit a draft to Democrats, the more likely it is that he will be pressured to push for the full slate of cuts (all $60 billion).

Biden Heads To Hill As Roadmap For Government Funding Resolution Emerges

Vice President Joseph Biden is meeting with Senate Democratic leadership Wednesday night in an effort to get officials on the same page concerning budget negotiations and plot out the next, crucial steps in talks with House Republicans.

The Vice President’s visit comes as a once dire-looking outlook over the state of funding discussions has turned a bit brighter. Democratic aides on Capitol Hill say that the two political parties now only stand a mere $6 billion apart on the size of spending cuts they will support and have an informal process in place to close that gap

According to a top Senate Democratic aide, the party has submitted a plan to House GOP leadership identifying an additional $20 billion in cuts it is willing to make on top of the $10 billion in cuts it has already passed in the form of stop-gap funding measures. The breakdown of the cuts is roughly 75 percent discretionary spending and 25 percent mandatory spending, mainly from Medicare subsidies.

The party is now awaiting a similar proposal from House Republicans that would pinpoint $36 billion in cuts that they prefer. “At the point that these are ready” the aide said, “the appropriations committee staff from the [Republican] House and the [Democratic] Senate would then take the two offers and mesh them such that a little was taken from a, a bit from b, and the final top-line number was somewhere in between.” The end amount will be roughly around the $32 billion in cuts that House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) initially proposed in his continuing resolution.

Biden, the aide added, had been “helping to reach this understanding with phone calls to the GOP side.”

That a rough roadmap for resolution of the funding difference had emerged certainly provides a more upbeat backdrop than other recent reports, which had negotiations between the parties essentially dissolved. But while “all parties were now back at the table" -- as another Senate aide put it -- resolution still remains far off.

For starters, the first Senate aide relayed that the party has not yet received a proposal from House Republicans detailing their $36 billion in cuts. With Tea Party protesters descending upon the Hill, the concern among Democrats is that the longer Boehner takes to submit a draft to Democrats, the more likely it is that he will be pressured to push for the full slate of cuts (all $60 billion).

Michele Bachmann: I Wouldn't Have Gone Into Libya

A tea party-backed conservative congresswoman says President Barack Obama has failed to demonstrate a vital U.S. national security interest for going into Libya.

Rep. Michele Bachmann also says "I would not have gone in" to the strife-torn North African country where strongman Moammar Gadhafi is fighting to cling to power against a resistance force.

The Minnesota Republican is considering whether to seek her party's 2012 presidential nomination. She tells NBC's "Today" show she doesn't support intervening regularly in humanitarian crises.

She says the "Obama doctrine" would provide a rationale for the United States "to enter into one country after another." Bachmann says she's against giving military assistance to the rebels fighting Gadhafi, saying she fears there are al Qaida elements among their numbers.