Did Kasich Just Do an About-Face on Climate Change?
Maybe it’s because he is still feeling his way as a late entrant into the GOP presidential campaign, but Ohio Gov. John Kasich did a fairly dramatic about-face over the weekend on the politically charged issue of climate change.
Kasich, a former House Budget Committee chair and Wall Street business executive, has positioned himself as a “kinder, gentler” conservative than Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and the dozen other Republicans running for the 2016 presidential nomination. So it wasn’t surprising that he would take a more moderate stand on global warming during the first nationally televised GOP presidential debate Thursday evening.
Related: 10 Things You Need to Know About John Kasich
Kasich, a devout Christian, declared during the two-hour debate sponsored by Fox News that climate change is a real problem requiring government and society to protect the “creation that the Lord has given us.”
While the vast majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail are highly skeptical of President Obama’s campaign to curb industrial carbon emissions to prevent the disastrous long term effects of global warming on the environment and economy, Kasich appeared to be one of the few who took the threat seriously.
He emphasized the importance of unity and cooperation, saying at one point that “we’ve got to unite our country again, because we’re stronger when we are united and we are weaker when we are divided.”
Just a few days later, though, after winning plaudits for his Thursday night performance – with some even favorably comparing his views on environmental threats to those of Pope Francis – Kasich sounded much like a climate-change doubter.
Related: Does Kasich Have a Chance? How He Can Catch Up to the GOP
During an appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Kasich told moderator Chuck Todd that “I think man absolutely affects the environment, but as to whether, you know, what the impact is, the overall impact, I think that’s a legitimate debate.”
Kasich went on to say that in Ohio, “we preciously take care of Lake Erie, and we’ve reduced emissions by 30 percent over the last ten years.”
“We believe in alternative energy,” he added. “So of course we have to be sensitive to it, but we don’t want to destroy people’s jobs, based on some theory that’s not proven.”
According to National Journal, the Kasich 2016 campaign attempted to clarify his remarks following his appearance on “Meet the Press.” "The governor has long believed climate change is real and we need to do something about it,” according to the statement. “The debate over exact percentages of why it is happening is less important than what can be done about it. We know it is real, we know man has an impact, and we know we need to do something."
A number of prominent presidential candidates -- including former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sens. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul -- are climate change doubters or deniers. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is one of the few who unquestionably accepts scientific evidence that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are a principal cause of global warming, and has sharply criticized his party for lacking a comprehensive environmental platform.
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Number of the Day: $132,900
The cap on Social Security payroll taxes will rise to $132,900 next year, an increase of 3.5 percent. (Earnings up to that level are subject to the Social Security tax.) The increase will affect about 11.6 million workers, Politico reports. Beneficiaries are also getting a boost, with a 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase coming in 2019.
Photo of the Day: Kanye West at the White House
This is 2018: Kanye West visited President Trump at the White House Thursday and made a rambling 10-minute statement that aired on TV news networks. West’s lunch with the president was supposed to focus on clemency, crime in his hometown of Chicago and economic investment in urban areas, but his Oval Office rant veered into the bizarre. And since this is the world we live in, we’ll also point out that West apparently became “the first person to ever publicly say 'mother-f***er' in the Oval Office.”
Trump called Kanye’s monologue “pretty impressive.”
“That was bonkers,” MSNBC’s Ali Velshi said afterward.
Again, this is 2018.
Chart of the Day: GDP Growth Before and After the Tax Bill
President Trump and the rest of the GOP are celebrating the recent burst in economic growth in the wake of the tax cuts, with the president claiming that it’s unprecedented and defies what the experts were predicting just a year ago. But Rex Nutting of MarketWatch points out that elevated growth rates over a few quarters have been seen plenty of times in recent years, and the extra growth generated by the Republican tax cuts was predicted by most economists, including those at the Congressional Budget Office, whose revised projections are shown below.
Are States Ready for the Next Downturn?
The Great Recession hit state budgets hard, but nearly half are now prepared to weather the next modest downturn. Moody’s Analytics says that 23 states have enough reserves to meet budget shortfalls in a moderate economic contraction, up from just 16 last year, Bloomberg reports. Another 10 states are close. The map below shows which states are within 1 percent of their funding needs for their rainy day funds (in green) and which states are falling short.
Chart of the Day: Evolving Price of the F-35
The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act signed in August included 77 F-35 Lightning II jets for the Defense Department, but Congress decided to bump up that number in the defense spending bill finalized this week, for a total of 93 in the next fiscal year – 16 more than requested by the Pentagon. Here’s a look from Forbes at the evolving per unit cost of the stealth jet, which is expected to eventually fall to roughly $80 million when full-rate production begins in the next few years.
