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Movement To Abandon Bank Of America Picks Up Key Backer

2011-10-06T15:15:34Z

On Sunday night, Rep. Brad Miller, a Democrat from Bank of America's home state of North Carolina, attended a general assembly meeting of Occupy Raleigh, the local offshoot of the national protest movement against Wall Street greed and abuse. When he returned to Washington, he announced the introduction of a bill that aims to make it easier for millions of consumers to take part in their own personal marches -- away from big banks.

As of now, major banks employ a variety of tactics to make it difficult for consumers to walk away when they jack up fees, as Bank of America did recently by announcing a new $5 monthly debit fee, blaming Wall Street reform for necessitating the hike. Congress can pass legislation countering abusive fees, but without a real free market, banks are able to figure out new ways to wring money from customers. Instead of focusing on regulation, said Miller, the goal should be to create a true free market.

“If we can find a way to introduce real competition into banking, that'd do more than any regulation," Miller told HuffPost. "The biggest banks have turned the switch for market forces to the off position. If consumers could shop around for banks the way they can for everything else, banks wouldn’t think they had a God-given right to pay their executives vulgar bonuses and still make enormous profits, and consumers would get a much better deal."

Miller's bill, The Freedom and Mobility in Consumer Banking Act, would make it easier for consumers to switch accounts and end certain bank practices.

On Thursday, the nearly 800,000-member advocacy group Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) launched a national campaign to win support for Miller's legislation, calling on people to sign a petition and contact their member of Congress.

"Across America, a simmering rage is coming to a boil against Wall Street greed," PCCC emailed to supporters. "The Occupy Wall Street movement has channeled this anger. Today, we're focusing it into a deep corporate accountability campaign against one of Wall Street's worst actors. Rep. Miller's bill is just the first step. Later, we'll organize at local branches across the country and target Bank of America with hard-hitting ads."

The PCCC petition also allows members to send notes of support to Occupy Wall Street protesters. "Our staffer on the ground will personally deliver these notes to their General Assembly," read the email.

Bank lobbyists are blaming Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) for the new fee, arguing that his amendment to cap the fees banks can charge merchants when customers use debit cards left Bank of America no choice but to implement it. Durbin, in response, encouraged consumers to make their own choice.

"My word to consumers across America is, talk with your feet, look for a debit card that doesn't charge the Bank of America fee," Durbin told HuffPost, adding that the revenue the bank will earn from the new fee likely far outstrips what it will lose to swipe fee reform. "It would be no surprise if we found out that Bank of America is overcharging consumers again. They've been found guilty of that in the past, but I really encourage consumers across America to look for competition that doesn't charge this fee, move their debit cards."

WATCH video of Rep. Miller at Occupy Raleigh:

Scott Brown: 'Thank God' Elizabeth Warren Didn't 'Take Her Clothes Off'

2011-10-06T14:27:51Z

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) Thursday said he was glad that one of his Democratic opponents, consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, didn't "take her clothes off" to pay for college. Brown, who won his seat in a 2009 special election, was speaking on Boston radio station WZLX.

Brown made his comments when asked about Warren's response in a debate Tuesday to a question about how she paid for college. The question referenced the fact that Brown posed nude for Cosmopolitan in 1982 to make money.

"I kept my clothes on," Warren said, adding that she borrowed money to go to a public university and worked a part-time job.

"Have you officially responded to Elizabeth Warren’s comment about how she didn’t take her clothes off?" the host asked Brown Wednesday.

"Thank God!" Brown said, laughing.

The host got a kick out it, too. "That’s what I said! I said, 'Look, can you blame a good-looking guy for wanting to, you know…”

"You know what, listen: Bottom line is, you know, I didn’t go to Harvard, you know, I went to the school of hard knocks, and I did whatever I had to do to pay for school," Brown cut in. "And for people who know me, and know what I’ve been through … mom and dad married and divorced four times each. You know, some real challenges growing up. You know, whatever. You know, let them throw stones. I did what I had to do. But [if] not for having that opportunity, I never would have been able to pay for school, and never would have gone to school, and I wouldn’t probably be talking to you, so, whatever."

Warren did not go to Harvard either, as Brown seemed to imply. She graduated from the University of Houston, a public school, though she spent her first two years at the private George Washington University on a debate scholarship. She later attended law school at Rutgers, a public university in New Jersey. Brown graduated from Tufts University and Boston College Law School.

Brown reminded the host that they shared equally in the blame for the Warren crack.

"That’s funny, you throw that jab," the host said, before Brown interjected: "You said it, too!"

It was fair game, the host pointed out. "Well, they said it about you! And not being in shape. You know, 'if you’re going to take your clothes off, next time, be in shape.' That’s what they said about you!"

Brown said he'd be happy to compete "anytime they want to have a little road race, or a triathlon, or anything."

Warren, a Harvard law school professor, was instrumental in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. President Obama did not nominate her to serve as the permanent head of it, fearing a contentious Senate confirmation battle; he instead nominated former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who cleared his first hurdle in a Senate subcommittee Thursday.

READ MORE about Elizabeth Warren:

WATCH Scott Brown's legendary flu game performance on the Senate floor:

Dems On Offense Against Bank Of America For Debit Fee

2011-09-30T18:50:19Z

WASHINGTON -- While demonstrators in New York are calling for an occupation of Wall Street, a new push by Democrats in Congress proposes a different tactic: Just walk away.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Rep. Brad Miller are going on the offensive against Bank of America after the financial behemoth cited Wall Street reform in announcing a new five dollar monthly debit charge last week. Miller, a Democrat from BofA's home state of North Carolina, plans to introduce legislation that would make it easy for consumers to switch banks and simultaneously swap their direct deposit, electronic bill paying and other automatic features that make moving money from one bank to another more hassle than it's often worth.

Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, meanwhile, is encouraging consumers to abandon the bank's debit card. "My word to consumers across America is talk with your feet, look for a debit card that doesn't charge the Bank of America fee," Durbin told HuffPost, adding that the revenue from the new fee likely far outstrips what they'll lose to swipe fee reform. "It would be no surprise if we found out that Bank of America is overcharging consumers again. They've been found guilty of that in the past, but I really encourage consumers across America to look for competition that doesn't charge this fee, move their debit cards."

The Chicago Tribune, Durbin's home state paper, dubbed the BofA charge "the Durbin fee," which conservative blogs and Republicans have been happy to latch onto, arguing that the hike was a logical consequence of Durbin's swipe fee reform, which capped the fees banks could charge merchants for using debit cards.

On Saturday, the Federal Reserve instituted a 24 cent cap on swipe fees, estimating that running the card costs banks between 7 and 10 cents per swipe. The cap is roughly 20 cents lower than the average swipe fee had been previously.

Anne Pace, a Bank of America spokeswoman, noted that other banks are testing similar fees and that Regents and SunTrust are also hiking charges. "The price of a debit card was previously determined by the amount and type of transactions. We were able to pass some of these costs along to merchants, but because of regulatory changes, we are adjusting our pricing to reflect today’s economics," she told HuffPost.

On Friday, Durbin's office sent around a memo, obtained by HuffPost, to other senators who had supported his swipe fee amendment, telling them to reject the suggestion that swipe fee reform required BofA to raise fees. Banks raise fees no matter what, Durbin argued in defense, noting that they'd raised fees after the bailout.

The Electronic Payments Coalition, which represents banks in the swipe fee battle, hit back at Durbin. “It is astounding that Senator Durbin, who created today’s chaos, is now trying to point the finger at everyone but himself for the widely predicted consumer harm," spokeswoman Trish Wexler emailed to HuffPost.

"Senator Durbin has spent years pushing the agenda of giant retailers, while flatly ignoring repeated warnings by consumer advocates, economists, and regulators this type of consequence. The truth is that Senator Durbin knew that banks and credit unions across the board would have to raise prices. Instead of heeding our warnings and protecting consumers, he chose to put millions of dollars into the pockets of giant retailers.”

Miller's bill represents a chance to go on offense. Durbin told HuffPost it's something he could get behind, though he has yet to see the legislative language. "I've worked with Brad, he's come up with some pretty good ideas and I like the concept very much," Durbin said. "We've got to give consumers an opportunity for creating competition in the banking industry. Right now that is very difficult, we've got to make it easier."

The system in place today makes it difficult to switch accounts. But it doesn't have to be that way. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation regularly takes over failing banks on Friday afternoons and converts them to new banks by Monday morning, using software that makes sure not a single customer misses an automatic bill pay or a direct deposit. Miller's bill would require banks to make it as easy as technologically possible to switch accounts, and would forbid practices aimed at keeping consumers locked in.

Miller had been studying the legislation for at least a year, he said, but decided to pull the trigger after BofA's $5 fee was instituted. It is at heart a free-market reform, he said, and was inspired by HuffPost's Move Your Money campaign that unfolded after the bailout.

Due to Republican-controlled redistricting, Miller faces a difficult primary against Democratic Rep. David Price if he hopes to remain in Congress, as both have been stuffed into the same district.

Legislation and regulation without a free market will ultimately fail, Miller said, and will lead to endless new fees as banks replace revenue lost to consumer protections with new charges. Without a real free market, consumers won't be able to respond the way they normally would.

Durbin noted that small banks and credit unions that are able, under Durbin's amendment, to charge higher swipe fees, should use that revenue to provide free debit cards that could win market share from BofA. "The community banks and credit unions that are exempt from this ought to step in with a zero charge debit card. At that point, it could be interesting. We could actually have some competition over debit cards," he said.

"In any other line of business, companies would be reluctant to raise their fees for fear of losing customers. That fear doesn't seem to be present in the banking industry," Miller said.

Even without the increased competition from Miller's bill, BofA's fee may not last. In January 2010, TCF Bank, which pioneered free checking in the 1980s, announced it would begin charging a monthly fee in response to Fed rules restricting overdraft charges. The move was regularly cited during the 2010 swipe fee fracas as evidence of the harm that would befall consumers if Durbin didn't back off. This January, TCF brought back free checking after losing customers.

One day before the Senate was expected to vote on delaying swipe fee reform in June, Chase went one step further: Thanks to the Durbin amendment, thousands of Chase customers were warned, your kid can forget about that trip to Disney World. "Congress recently enacted a new law known as the Durbin Amendment that significantly impacts debit cards," reads the letter. "As a result of this law, we will be changing our debit rewards program. After July 21, 2011 you will no longer earn Disney Dream Reward Dollars when you use your Disney Rewards Debit Card."

Durbin said that the fee is part of the bank's lobbying strategy to undo swipe fee reform. "I expect the banking industry to continue to kick and scream over this...They just happen to think they can win the day, ultimately, in Congress if they keep the pressure up," he said. "I'm not going to shed any tears for Bank of America. They made some awful decisions when it came to mortgages that jeopardized the future of their bank. They've had problems with profitability and losses leading up to this moment and for them to blame this law, which finally puts an end to the monopoly they had on swipe fees, it just doesn't bear up under close inspection."

Miller, in a letter to House colleagues, describes ways in which the legislation makes it easier to switch accounts:

The Freedom and Mobility in Consumer Banking Act makes the following changes and clarifications to existing law:
Increases competition among banks by guaranteeing consumers the right to close a personal checking or savings account:

• Provides consumers the right to close an account at no charge

• Provides consumer the right to close an account at any time, regardless of whether the balance is positive, zero, or negative

• Provides consumer the right to close an account in person, by phone, or by other remote means as may be prescribed by regulation

Prohibits abusive fees and charges:

• Prohibits fees or charges from being assessed to an account after receiving a request to close an account

Requires banks to take reasonable steps to facilitate account closures:

• Requires institutions to notify consumers of preauthorized and recurring debits that hit their account for 30 days after a qualified account is closed

• Requires institutions to remit the balance in a closed account to the customer’s new account electronically if the consumer chooses

Prohibits banks from blacklisting consumers for failing to satisfy bank-generated fees assessed to an account at time of closure:

• Provides that consumers shall be given at least 30 days to remit payment for an account that is closed with a negative balance before the institution can initiate any collection activity, or reporting to a third party

• Provides that where an account is closed with a negative balance that is exclusively the result of overdraft or other fees assessed to the account by the depository institution, the institution may not report the account as delinquent to ChexSystems or any similar specialty consumer reporting service.

HuffPosts's Zach Carter contributed reporting.

This article has been updated to include a statement from the Electronic Payments Coalition.

Dems On Offense Against Bank Of America For Debit Fee

2011-09-30T18:50:19Z

WASHINGTON -- While demonstrators in New York are calling for an occupation of Wall Street, a new push by Democrats in Congress proposes a different tactic: Just walk away.

Due to Republican-controlled redistricting, Miller faces a difficult primary against Democratic Rep. David Price if he hopes to remain in Congress, as both have been stuffed into the same district.

"In any other line of business, companies would be reluctant to raise their fees for fear of losing customers. That fear doesn't seem to be present in the banking industry," Miller said.

Miller, in a letter to House colleagues, describes ways in which the legislation makes it easier to switch accounts:

The Freedom and Mobility in Consumer Banking Act makes the following changes and clarifications to existing law:
Increases competition among banks by guaranteeing consumers the right to close a personal checking or savings account:

• Provides consumers the right to close an account at no charge

• Provides consumer the right to close an account at any time, regardless of whether the balance is positive, zero, or negative

• Provides consumer the right to close an account in person, by phone, or by other remote means as may be prescribed by regulation

Prohibits abusive fees and charges:

• Prohibits fees or charges from being assessed to an account after receiving a request to close an account

Requires banks to take reasonable steps to facilitate account closures:

• Requires institutions to notify consumers of preauthorized and recurring debits that hit their account for 30 days after a qualified account is closed

• Requires institutions to remit the balance in a closed account to the customer’s new account electronically if the consumer chooses

Prohibits banks from blacklisting consumers for failing to satisfy bank-generated fees assessed to an account at time of closure:

• Provides that consumers shall be given at least 30 days to remit payment for an account that is closed with a negative balance before the institution can initiate any collection activity, or reporting to a third party

• Provides that where an account is closed with a negative balance that is exclusively the result of overdraft or other fees assessed to the account by the depository institution, the institution may not report the account as delinquent to ChexSystems or any similar specialty consumer reporting service.

HuffPosts's Zach Carter contributed reporting.

This article has been updated to include a statement from the Electronic Payments Coalition.

American Al-Awlaki Killed Abroad Without Trial

2011-09-30T15:26:26Z

WASHINGTON - The United States government killed an American citizen in Yemen on Friday in hostile action, despite not having declared war on the country or charging the citizen, American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, with a crime.

In a statement Friday morning, President Obama hailed the killing as "a major blow to al Qaeda's most active operational affiliate." He also said the death "marks another significant milestone in the broader effort to defeat al Qaeda."

Time magazine reported al Awlaki was killed by airstrikes by the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, the same unit that took out Osama bin Laden in May.

A senior defense official echoed Obama's remarks, calling al-Awlaki's death "a decisive blow to al-Qaeda in Yemen ... A very bad man just had a very bad day. It's a good day, though, for American counterterrorism efforts."

American officials added al-Awlaki two years ago to a list of targets whom the military is authorized to kill, a move that raised the consternation and concerns of many civil liberties groups.

"For two years since Awlaki has reportedly been added to a kill list, the administration has made a lot of statements to the press but has presented no evidence to a court," said Ben Wizner, the National Security Project Litigation Director at the ACLU. "There's a distinction between allegations and evidence that's pretty critical here. Our argument isn't that you need to go to a court just to make the claim that he is an imminent threat, but placing someone on a kill list for months or years seems fundamentally inconsistent with the legal definition of 'imminent,' and so there's really no reason why a judicial role can't happen here."

Al-Awlaki graduated from Colorado State University and earned his master's at San Diego State University. Once a moderate cleric and a darling of the U.S. media, al-Awlaki gradually came to believe that violence against the United States was justified.

Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional blogger with Salon.com, appeared on Democracy Now Friday morning to denounce the killing as a step beyond what President Bush had done. "If you are somebody that believes the President of the United States has the power to order your fellow citizens murdered, assassinated, killed without a shred of due process," Greenwald said, "then you are really declaring yourself to be as pure of an authoritarian as it gets."

WATCH Greenwald On Democracy Now:

Experts on Al Qaeda and counterterrorism have been split over the true importance of al-Awlaki to the global jihadi movement, with many experts believing that he was far more influential in the West than he ever was in Yemen, his home.

"He's someone who is much more well known in the West than he is in Yemen," said Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton. "He's not the number 1, not the number 2, not the number 3 [in Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula]. He's not the chief religious leader, not the head bomb maker, he's not any of these roles. But in terms of being someone who inspired so-called 'lone wolf' terrorists in the West -- someone who speaks English, is very charismatic -- that's where he was a unique figure and he will not be as easily replaced."

Aaron Zelin, an expert at Brandeis University on jihadi movements, agreed that Awlaki has greatly influenced English-speaking jihadists, but that his internal significance to the global movement may be overstated or even exacerbated by the American focus on him.

"Part of the problem is Awlaki speaks English, so people in the media here understand what he's saying," Zelin said, adding that Awlaki has only twice released statements in Arabic.

"In the past few years, with the U.S.'s campaign to kill him, he's become much more popular in the Arab world. His work has been translated into Urdu, Arabic, Malay, Russian, Bosnian -- all in the past year. [Without the Western focus] I think he still would have been big in the Western jihadi community, but I don't think he would have been taken as seriously in the global jihadi community."

U.S. officials have insisted that al-Awlaki had shifted in the past couple of years from speaking out against the U.S. to helping to organize attacks against it, though officials have yet to offer evidence publicly in court to back up those charges. Intelligence officials say they have linked al-Awlaki to the Fort Hood shootings in November 2009, as well as to a failed plot to bring down an American airliner in late 2010.

One former state department official told The Huffington Post on Friday that American intelligence evaluations have concluded that Awlaki has taken on a more operational capacity in recent years. He pointed to a recent issue of the Al Qaeda propaganda magazine Inspire, in which an article that American officials believed to have been penned by al-Awlaki was signed "Head of Foreign Operations."

"This happened over the last couple of years," the former official said. "Before that, he was much more of an inspirational leader, but this really changed up after he got to Yemen."

Nevertheless, the internal debate over whether his killing would be legal or appropriate, the former official said, was intense.

"I can tell you the government was really torn on this issue," he said. "There was a lot of hand wringing. It was not an easy call."

"It'll be really interesting to see if the U.S. now comes out and makes the public case about why they killed him," Johnsen said.

Nevertheless, the national security establishment is celebrating his death. Jane Harman is the former chair of the House homeland security subcommittee on intelligence and now president of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "It's tricky that he was a U.S. citizen, but he clearly stated his intention to kill Americans and the Justice Department thoroughly vetted the legal issues and this strike was within the law," said Harman.

Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University said that while Awlaki was a native-born U.S. citizen, "He made his bed. He was obviously targeting the United States and took part in treasonous activity ... He not only joined up but was in the leadership of an organization that has declared war on the United States."

That doesn't excuse his killing, said Mary Ellen O'Connell, a Notre Dame scholar who studies targeted killings. "Derogation from the fundamental right to life is permissible only in battle zones or to save a human life immediately," said O'Connell. "The killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki did not occur in these circumstances. International law and moral principle have been breached in a place where the United States should be demonstrating non-violence and support for peaceful means of transforming society."

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, said that the killing is troubling. "No, I don't think that's a good way to deal with our problems," Paul said after a campaign event in New Hampshire. "Al-Awlaki was born here, he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad."

Paul noted the different treatment afforded the Oklahoma bomber. "What would people have said about Timothy McVeigh? We didn't assassinate him, and they were pretty certain he had done it. They went and put him through the courts, and then they executed him. To start assassinating American citizens without charges, we should think very seriously about this."

The Fifth Amendment forbids the federal government from depriving any person -- not just American citizens -- of "life ... without due process of law." Last summer, al-Awlaki’s father tried to enforce this fundamental constitutional limitation when he brought suit in federal court to stop the Obama administration’s efforts to assassinate his son without charging al-Awlaki with a crime or bringing him to trial. But the court tossed the suit in December, holding that parents cannot sue on their child's behalf once the child reaches the age of majority.

The ruling left the Obama Administration free to carry out its operation against al-Awlaki, under the justification that his al Qaeda membership made him a legitimate wartime target, American citizen or not.

Mike Sacks and Andrea Stone contributed reporting

American Al-Awlaki Killed Abroad Without Trial

2011-09-30T15:26:26Z

WATCH Greenwald On Democracy Now:

"Part of the problem is Awlaki speaks English, so people in the media here understand what he's saying," Zelin said, adding that Awlaki has only twice released statements in Arabic.

"This happened over the last couple of years," the former official said. "Before that, he was much more of an inspirational leader, but this really changed up after he got to Yemen."

Nevertheless, the internal debate over whether his killing would be legal or appropriate, the former official said, was intense.

"I can tell you the government was really torn on this issue," he said. "There was a lot of hand wringing. It was not an easy call."

"It'll be really interesting to see if the U.S. now comes out and makes the public case about why they killed him," Johnsen said.

Mike Sacks and Andrea Stone contributed reporting

GOP Rep Smiles For Camera, Cuts Ribbon On Project He Opposed

2011-09-27T14:38:00Z

WASHINGTON -- An ardent opponent of the federal stimulus plan showed up Monday in Winnetka, Ill., to smile and cut the ribbon at a ceremony unveiling a local project funded by that very stimulus.

"Originally built in the 1940s, the [train] station not only got a facelift but three heated platform warming shelters, two new elevators and a new pedestrian bridge to allow commuters to wait in the station and then quickly cross over the tracks to the Chicago-bound platform," Winnetka-Glencoe Patch reported Tuesday morning.

A $4.9 million renovation courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 arrived at Winnetka’s historic Elm Street train station Monday with a restoration of much of the original woodwork and modern elevators from the station to the platform.
Village President Jessica Tucker joined the festivities alongside Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill.), state Rep. Daniel Biss (D-Evanston), state Rep. Robyn Gable (D-Evanston), Metra board member and Arlington Heights Mayor Arlene Mulder and other dignitaries among the crowd of more than 40 people.

The stimulus was opposed by every House Republican and all but three Senate Republicans, yet Dold is just one of scores of Republicans who've celebrated funding at home while opposing it in Washington. Dold was not in Congress when the ARRA was passed, but told Patch in 2010 during his campaign that he would have opposed it.

"I myself think that what's going on right now is our out-of-control spending is just that -- out of control," he said. "We need to make sure we're not raising taxes. We need to focus on how to get people back to work. In the 10th [of] this $862 billion stimulus package, we spent $169 million in the 10th District, ... and we've created 158 jobs. That is a dismal failure. We need to be pro-growth and pro-jobs strategies out there."

The stimulus is often discussed only in terms of the number of jobs that were created, but the money also left behind infrastructure improvements such as the renovation in Winnetka. At the unveiling of the refurbished Elm Street project, Dold told the crowd, according to Patch, that "this is an infrastructure project we can be proud of."

During a June speech at the Illinois Policy Institute, Dold lambasted stimulus spending in Illinois as inefficient and wasteful.

Shortly after being sworn in, Dold also cosponsored legislation rescinding any unspent stimulus money.

Spreading Freedom: Google And The War For The Web

2011-09-25T22:34:00Z

WASHINGTON -- You can't swing a dead cat video in Washington lately without hitting a lobbyist, consultant, attorney or adviser on retainer to Google or one of its tech rivals. Google, whose top executives have long been a bottomless cup of campaign coffee for Democrats, is finally entering its bipartisan phase, theatrically hiring Republican operatives and broadcasting the news through insider Washington publications, pumping air into a K Street tech bubble.

The shift in political strategy comes as Google faces a serious antitrust threat, punctuated by a high-profile hearing on the company held Wednesday afternoon in the Senate. But Google's investment in the infrastructure of the conservative movement goes much deeper than what's been reported this summer.

The company known for its progressive politics is now giving money to the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Republican Governors Association, the GOP firm The David All Group, Crossroads Strategies, the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican State Leadership Committee, among others. On Thursday, Google and Fox News cosponsored a Republican presidential debate.

In the last nine months, Google has hired 18 lobbying shops -- not 18 lobbyists, but 18 firms, a dozen of them since July, a head-turning torrent of hiring that also includes consultants not required to register as lobbyists.

"I consider myself a public works project right here," Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the committee leading the antitrust investigation, told HuffPost. "My colleagues call it the Leahy Full Employment Act."

The GOP effort hasn't quite sunk in: Republicans in the House and Senate reacted with pleasant surprise when told by HuffPost that Google had started donating to movement conservatives. "Are you saying they're finally becoming bipartisan? That's a good thing. Bipartisanship is a positive thing," said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the head of the Senate GOP's fundraising arm and one of three Republicans on the subcommittee holding the antitrust hearing. "I understand why people feel like they need to have people they can talk to on both sides."

Google certainly feels that need. In public and in private, Google officials complain that longtime rival Microsoft, with its more entrenched Washington operation, is more or less out to get them. Microsoft responds that it makes no secret of its lobbying or its efforts to rein Google in: Its complaint to the European Union, for instance, was made publicly, and it fully acknowledges its lead participation in a coalition, FairSearch.org, organized to lobby on behalf of antitrust action against Google. "Clearly Microsoft were the first people to start to blow the clarion call" on anti-trust issues, said one top Microsoft mercenary. "They had the resources to get people engaged in thinking about it, but I don't think they've had any trouble getting people to agree." Indeed, Google's public critics have been multiplying almost as quickly as their lobbying roster.

Google and Microsoft now dominate influence-peddling around Internet issues, each having spent $3.5 million on lobbying through the first half of 2011. Google's total lobbyist count is now up to 93, the highest number the company has ever had in Washington (roughly one for every six members of Congress). The biggest thrust of Google’s lobbying push involves antitrust, patents, copyright, trade and China.

Microsoft’s lobbying peaked in the mid-2000s, when Congress and antitrust investigators had their sights set on the software powerhouse. Currently, the company’s work in Washington is largely focused on setting and gaming the tax code, a pet issue for corporations seasoned in the ways of the capitol.

Still, Microsoft’s lobbyists also continue to work heavily on antitrust, patent, copyright, trade, and China issues. Sixty-four percent of the 76 lobbyists employed by Microsoft are registered on these issues. Eighty-one percent of those lobbyists have previous government experience, according to a HuffPost analysis of lobbying disclosure reports and data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Microsoft continues to dominate Google when it comes to campaign and political action committee spending, outspending Google nearly tenfold in the first half of 2011. Microsoft reported contributing $580,000 to congressmen, candidates, political parties and leadership PACs, while Google reported $61,000 in donations over the same period.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking to reporters after his sworn testimony Wednesday, said that Microsoft had been lobbying hard to pressure Congress to bring the antitrust hammer down on Google -- the blunt pain of which Microsoft knows all too well.

Schmidt's rivalry with Microsoft has deep roots, dating back to his days as an executive with Sun Microsystems in the 1980s, when Microsoft -- in the eyes of Silicon Valley start-ups and, ultimately, the U.S. Department of Justice -- threatened to lock down the digital free market in America. The top tech executives have been at each ever since. "Everything's personal for all those guys," said a consultant for Microsoft who knows both sides well. "They don't have to fight over money, they're all fucking rich. They have to fight over ego and dominance and control."

Schmidt's fixation on Microsoft came through in the opening of his testimony. "I want to start first by taking a step back," Schmidt began. "Twenty years ago, a large technology firm was setting the world on fire. Its software was on nearly every computer and its name was synonymous with innovation. But that company lost site of what mattered and Washington stepped in. I was an executive at Sun and later Novell at the time, and in the years since, many of us have absorbed the lessons of that era. So I'm here today carrying a long history."

Schmidt said that he had "a message from our company: We get it. By that, I mean, we get the lessons of our corporate predecessors."

The conflict between Google and Microsoft has also triggered an international war over the nature of intellectual property, as to how -- and whether -- knowledge should be owned.

Google is benefiting from the freedom-loving street cred it won by theatrically bailing from China -- or at least publicly proclaiming its independence -- to shield its drive to succeed where Microsoft failed a decade ago. Meanwhile, Microsoft is using its remaining influence to fight Google, allied with the American entertainment industry and a loose coalition of tech companies, from Facebook to Travelocity to Yelp.

Overseas, Microsoft has also joined forces with the Chinese search giant Baidu, as China's government seeks to fight Google's influence there, as well. For Baidu, it's a second go-around with an American giant. In 2005, Google invested $5 million in Baidu before it went public, later cashing out for $60 million.

Microsoft's stated concerns about freedom in the U.S. intellectual-property market are complicated by the company's actions in China. Baidu's data is stored on state-owned servers and Baidu, according to its annual financial disclosure, retains information on its users' activity and provides it to government minders. Even before its partnership with Baidu, Microsoft's search engine Bing filtered out results for users in China that the state found threatening, including political dissent.

Microsoft is all too happy to be in the audience for Google's hearing rather than on the witness stand as they were in 1998, facing antitrust investigations that would dog them for years. Today, Google's market power is being scrutinized by Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl's subcommittee, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and the European Union.

Many of those prosecutors are lobbied heavily by Google's enemies, Microsoft among them. But they may be all that stands between Google, which now handles some 90 percent of all searches worldwide, and a monopoly on the market for knowledge.

FROM PRC TO K STREET

Google's antitrust hearing comes more than a year after the search giant burned its relationship with the Chinese government by removing its filters, proclaiming that China's level of censorship was too blatantly in conflict with Google's oft-repeated corporate ethos, "Don't Be Evil." But the censorship was merely outsourced, with the government itself blocking certain searches from Google's Hong Kong operation.

Microsoft sees China as Google's soft underbelly. This summer's partnership with Baidu, whereby Microsoft will run the company's English-language searches, allies Microsoft with the same kind of company that it -- and U.S. federal agencies -- routinely accuse of violating intellectual property laws. Baidu, which accounts for 80 percent of the web searches in the world's most populous nation, has spent years on the Office of the United States Trade Representative's "Notorious Markets" list. Though rarely mentioned in American media, the USTR's blacklist serves as a critical warning to a broad array of global corporations, and is a key tool in U.S. foreign policy. The list isn't concerned with Baidu's monitoring or censoring of political speech, however -- it takes issue with counterfeiting and piracy that U.S. interests find threatening.

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner put the issue in blunt terms. "They, China, have made possible systematic stealing of intellectual property of American companies and have not been very aggressive to put in place the basic protections for property rights that every serious economy needs over time," Geithner told a forum in Washington. "We're seeing China continue to be very, very aggressive in a strategy they started several decades ago, which goes like this: You want to sell to our country, we want you to come produce here ... if you want to come produce here, you need to transfer your technology to us."

One of those companies on the receiving end of the Chinese invitation is Baidu's partner, Microsoft, which is now the most aggressive U.S. software company in the anti-piracy lobbying fight, forging a key alliance between the tech community and the entertainment industry. Yet in multiple "Notorious Markets" reports, USTR was particularly critical of Baidu's ability to direct search engine queries toward pirate entertainment sites. At home, Microsoft is demanding tough enforcement of software and entertainment piracy. Abroad, it's forging a relationship with a company USTR labeled a top offender of music piracy.

On Nov. 18, two weeks after the Republican sweep of the House, a team of lobbyists sat down with Victoria Espinel, a senior official in the White House's Office of Management and Budget, to try and soften Baidu's image. Espinel, an Obama appointee, is in regular contact with the USTR in her role as intellectual property enforcement coordinator, according to an administration official.

Espinel, through an administration spokesperson, said she remembers Victor Liang, Baidu's general counsel, and James Mendenhall, a Bush-era general counsel and assistant U.S. trade representative, at the November meeting. According to Baidu's lobbying disclosure forms, Yabo Lin and Lei Li, China-born lobbyists, also registered with Mendenhall as having lobbied the OMB on the "Notorious Markets" report. Mendenhall is the kind of post-partisan lobbyist that a foreign businessman like Liang needs to help navigate the governmental maze. Mendenhall, Lin and Li work for the lobby shop Sidley Austin. A Baidu official acknowledged to HuffPost that the company had engaged Sidley Austin but declined to comment specifically on the OMB meeting.

Lin is a Palo Alto-based partner and Li is in Beijing, where he represents the next phase of the revolving door -- he worked for eight years as a top official in the People's Republic of China's Ministry of Commerce. Sidley Austin's web lobbying is now run by Rick Boucher, a Democrat who lost his House seat in 2010. He chaired the subcommittee with oversight of the Internet and championed Internet privacy.

Reached in Palo Alto, Lin said, "That was long ago. I have no comment." He has not terminated his contract with Baidu, according to disclosure forms. Li and Mendenhall did not respond to requests for comment.

At the time of the report, Microsoft was already engaged with Baidu in the smartphone market. In July, the two companies would announce their search engine partnership. A few weeks after that, Baidu would ink a licensing deal with major U.S. record labels to distribute songs in China, prompting praise from USTR -- which still keeps Baidu on its notorious list. Baidu also keeps tabs with USTR-- a Baidu official told HuffPost that his company worked hard to ensure the agency was aware of the music licensing deal this summer.

The fight over the closely watched report is just one skirmish in Washington, but it's an illustration of the projection of U.S. power abroad on behalf of corporate interests, both foreign and domestic.

That's a lesson Google learned late. "I recommended to them earlier that it'd be a nice thing for them to stop by and testify voluntarily, also made it very clear where we stand -- I always prefer voluntarily -- this is a case where there would be bipartisan support for a subpoena," Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy told HuffPost before Google Chairman Schmidt testified this week. Google, Leahy said, eschewed Washington representation for too long. "Sometimes a company should pay attention early on, not just when matters happen," he said. "But I can't tell them, nor would I, who they should hire or not."

The company seems to be trying to make up for lost time. All year, Google has been papering Washington with lobbying contracts and ad buys the likes of which haven't been seen since the fight between Wall Street and big box retail stores over swipe fee rates.

Google's lobbying armada knows its way around Washington. Ninety-one percent of them spun through the revolving door between government and K Street, according to a HuffPost analysis of lobbying disclosure reports and data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. Two of the new Google lobbyists, Louis Dupart of The Normandy Group and Gary Slaiman of Bingham McCutchen, served on the Senate antitrust subcommittee itself. They'll join the committee's former chief intellectual property counsel, also a Google lobbyist.

Leahy said the lobbying binge won't give Google an advantage. "They can hire all they want," he said. "They" -- the lobbyists -- "are not the ones that testify. They're not the ones asked the questions."

The hiring spree isn’t limited to registered lobbyists. Another key form of influence comes from well-connected lawyers and lobbyists who do not register to lobby. Google, like many other companies, takes advantage of a lobbying disclosure loophole allowing lobbyists to skip registering if they spend less than 20 percent of their time contacting officials. This loophole is often used by former lawmakers who can’t register to lobby according to revolving door rules or who don’t want to show up on official registrations.

Google employs three firms that boast four former members of Congress on staff, including former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, former House Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey, Blue Dog Democrat John Tanner and Texas Republican Henry Bonilla. Gephardt’s name appears on the registration form for his firm’s representations of Google, but he is not listed on their quarterly filings. Neither Obey, Tanner nor Bonilla are listed on lobbying disclosure firms for Google, but all are top principals at firms retained by the company. Whether they pick up the phone or not, their association with Google becomes part of the political dynamic.

The company is also well known to have close friends at the highest levels of the White House. Earlier this year, when Google inked a $500 million settlement with the Justice Department for illegally steering consumers toward companies advertising Canadian prescription drugs, a snap press conference was held in Rhode Island in August, with little heads up to the media. Even the Wall Street Journal's Thomas Catan, who broke the news of the criminal probe and followed it relentlessly, was caught flat-footed, three people familiar with the matter said. Catan got the press conference details nine minutes before it started, with no call-in line or web feed, nor could he get a tape or transcript. That may have been as much to shield the administration as Google. Late last year, Google organized a summit at the White House billed as addressing online pharmaceutical piracy. “As the administration has made clear, no one company can solve this problem," a top Google attorney said at the time, reflecting the company's hope that the issue would be seen as industry-wide rather than specific to Google. Victoria Espinel's praise of Google at the summit became an embarrassment when it became clear Google was under investigation at the time it convened the gathering.

At Wednesday's hearing, Schmidt made news by admitting that he was aware of what Google had been doing regarding the drugs.

Google didn't always flex such muscle. Just five years ago, the search giant spent just $800,000, employing 31 lobbyists, putting them nowhere near Microsoft, which spent $9 million and had more than 120 lobbyists on call that year. By 2010, however, Google ranked as the third-highest lobbying spender in the tech industry, behind Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. This year, Google is running even with Microsoft, on pace to spend millions more on lobbying than the search giant has in any previous year.

Microsoft’s contributions have found a home at the Senate Judiciary Committee, where committee members have received $251,500 from Microsoft’s PAC since 2006. Google, meanwhile, is spreading its money around to Washington institutions and media, recently sponsoring everything from the local NPR station, WAMU, to a widely read morning email, Politico's Playbook -- an ad buy that retails at $30,000 at week, a person familiar with it said. Its sponsored ads have been extremely tactical, highlighting how Google has helped particular small businesses in particular states. But not just any states. The first ad highlighted a cheesemaker in Wisconsin, home to Herb Kohl, the antitrust Senate subcommittee chair and, conveniently for Google, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the chair of the House subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet.

The second ad spotlighted a music store owner in Connecticut, represented by Senate antitrust subcommittee member Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who was one of the lead state attorneys general involved in the Microsoft suit. "The key questions of concern are the magnitude of their power and what responsibilities come with that," Blumenthal said before Wednesday's hearing, adding that lobbying had been done on both sides.

Next up was a cupcake shop in Brooklyn, not far from the subcommittee's second-ranking Democrat, Chuck Schumer. Later that week, Google came back to Kohl, celebrating a Green Bay Packers sports shop.

Google had done its homework. For people he doesn't know well, Kohl, owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, is virtually impossible to engage in conversation on anything other than sports. ("I didn't know about it," Kohl said of the attempt to capture his heart through his cheesehead.)

The newsletter also brought real Google news, announcing the company's hiring of former Bush aide Rob Saliterman, who was brought on "to run its sales and outreach efforts to Republican campaigns." Google went on to hit a New York business again, then a nonprofit that makes care packages for troops in Texas, the backyard of Senate antitrust subcommittee member John Cornyn of Texas and House antitrust subcommittee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith.

LEARNING CHINESE

When Chinese leader Hu Jintao flew to the United States for his first official visit in 2006, he had an important date to make along the way: Dinner with Bill Gates, reportedly brokered by Washington Gov. Gary Locke, the first Chinese American governor in the United States and later President Obama's commerce secretary. He's now the U.S. ambassador to China.

Microsoft's long dance with China has continued even after Gates ceded control of day-to-day operations in 2008 -- when Hu returned to America this year for a state dinner, current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer flew to meet him.

A top goal for Microsoft is to sell its software to hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers who've grown accustomed to getting programs for free. While Lei Li was lobbying the White House, a high-level "Special Campaign" was underway in China, led by top officials and run out of Li's former haunt, the Ministry of Commerce. In May, Ballmer met with the campaign's leader, Vice Premier Wang Qishan, who promised to continue cracking down on bogus software. In late November, shortly after the White House meeting, the State Council announced that from now on government offices would purchase software -- and promised only to buy the good stuff.

That could mean billions in the world's most populous country, where the government is the dominant buyer. Through the early 2000s, Gates and Ballmer repeatedly visited China, forging a partnership with Shanghai Alliance, a company worth doing business with: It was run by a son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2005 that Microsoft, as part of its lobbying campaign to cement the deal, donated software to the state-run China Telecom, China's State Economic and Trade Commission, and any government official in Beijing for three years. It pledged "$10 million to be invested in or donated to China's primary education system," the paper reported, in a story that was lifted and republished in full by The Standard, a Chinese business paper.

Microsoft also brought jobs to China, announcing in 2008 that it would spend a billion dollars on research and development there. This year, in addition to the Bing-Baidu deal, it announced partnerships with Renren, a social-networking site, and signed a cloud agreement with state-owned China Standard Software Company, which works closely with the Red Army -- subjecting its stored data to state oversight.

Those types of ties to Chinese firms require intimate relationships with the country's leadership, which both Ballmer and Gates have spent years developing. (Though Gates resigned as CEO of Microsoft in 2008, he remains its chairman and controls roughly 500 million shares of Microsoft stock, just under 6 percent of the company.) In 2007, the Gates Foundation opened a Beijing office. That year, according to tax documents, its investment arm owned roughly $700 million worth of stock in Chinese firms, many of them state-run enterprises. Its latest returns show roughly $500 million in such investments. Gates and his good friend Warren Buffett share a tailor with Hu Jintao.

So far, though, promises to crack down on software piracy haven't led to much, according to the USTR. This year, the U.S. office wrote that "the software industry reports no discernible increase in legitimate software sales to date, and no significant changes in software-related enforcement activity. This is despite China’s assertion in its Special Campaign plans that software legalization is a high priority."

"For this sector, it appears that this latest campaign is not yet having a positive effect," the USTR report added. "One company noted that most of the Chinese government’s efforts to purchase legal software have been focused on low-end and pirated domestic software."

Success in China means, of course, working with the Chinese government, which can sometimes put American companies in a strange spot. A May 2010 issue of the South China Post, for instance, carried news that "[b]osses from 42 internet media companies, including the mainland's most popular websites such as Sina, Sohu, Netease and Baidu as well as MSN China, Yahoo China and Tom.com, gathered in Chongqing this week at the invitation of the party chief and pledged to extol 'revolutionary spirit' and pass on 'red culture' on their websites." The group "waved red flags and sang classic songs from the revolutionary era." In June, when eight CEOs of Chinese Internet firms came out for a patriotic celebration, two were Microsoft partners.

There's more involved than just singing along. According to Baidu's most recent financial disclosure document, the company retains information on user web habits and IP addresses, sharing that information with the Chinese government. And even if they didn't, the government hosts Baidu's servers. China has regularly been accused by the U.S. government of hacking into government email and websites to steal sensitive information.

None of this seems to have given Microsoft pause. "We have done business in China for more than 20 years and we intend to stay engaged, which means our business must respect the laws of China," Ballmer said last year.

"Different countries have different rules about censorship, you know, pornography," Gates told a BBC interviewer last year. "Germany, if you make certain statements about being in the Nazi party, that's censored. In this country, that would be subject to free speech. And so you've got to decide, do you want to obey the laws of the countries you're in or not. If not, you, you may not end up doing business there. You know, fortunately, the trend towards openness and, and sharing ideas has, has been fostered in an incredible way."

RIGHTEOUS EXIT

China, of course, now looms large in the American political and corporate psyche -- a fact not lost on Google. When the company's executives talk about intellectual property disputes, the company routinely invokes the spectres of totalitarian control and governments crushing market competition along with free speech, frequently mentioning China by name. It's a convenient message for a company embroiled in antitrust disputes about whether or not it rigs the market for knowledge.

Intellectual property law dictates the ways knowledge is distributed, determines how it can be profitable, and protects original, creative ideas, products and services from simply being pick-pocketed. But strict intellectual property laws can also lock-out large populations from accessing useful ideas and life-saving products.

Google is an unusual entity on the corporate landscape: It gives its and sometimes other companies’ stuff away for free. Those on the receiving end love it. Google's technology is new, but its business model dates back to the early days of radio and then television, which offered a free product to the masses and then made money charging for ads on their platforms that were targeted at the masses.

And “free” puts lots of downward pressure on everybody else’s prices and profits -- leading critics to complain that Google can devalue the offerings of less well-entrenched competitors.

Microsoft, meanwhile, makes money selling software that is tethered, for the most part, to personal computers. In an era of mobility and cloud-computing however, Microsoft’s hold on consumer and corporate computer users seems much less certain. It has tried to compete with Google as an ad-generating search engine operating in the less restrictive confines of cyberspace, but so far it has failed.

So have many others. Search for “Los Angeles hotels,” or the name of a local restaurant, and you’re likely to see results from Google’s own listing service, Google Places, ahead of links from competitors like Yelp, TripAdvisor and Expedia, which have all been outspoken critics of Google’s search practices. Online travel companies even have their own coordinated lobbying enterprise: Fairsearch.org, featuring TripAdvisor, Expedia, Travelocity and others. Their only non-travel-industry partner: Microsoft. (A Microsoft spokesperson says that Bing Travel accounts for the company's membership in the group.)

These players, and others, accuse Google of using backhanded tactics to crush competitors by taking traffic from their sites. FairSearch.org was organized to oppose Google’s acquisition of ITA Software and to "prevent dominant companies from engaging in anticompetitive behavior and to protect investment and choice across the Internet ecosystem." The FairSearch.org website offers users the chance to "Learn more about how Google threatens competition and consumer choice" and showcases illustrations of Google executives paired with quotes the group says offer damning evidence that Google shouldn't be trusted. Google, on the other hand, counters that its policy is to do "what's best for the user" and that anyone who takes issue with its results can use another search engine that's "only one click away."

But Microsoft alleges that though it’s pouring billions into making Bing a credible threat to Google, Google is unfairly keeping its rivals from improving their search engines by denying them access to key content.

“Google has built its business on indexing and displaying snippets of other organizations’ Web content. It understands as well as anyone that search engines depend upon the openness of the Web in order to function properly, and it’s quick to complain when others undermine this. Unfortunately, Google has engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers,” Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith wrote in a recent blog post that added the software giant’s support to the EU’s antitrust investigation of Google.

Microsoft, itself no stranger to bullying rivals when it sees fit, argued that Google has been "impeding competition" by keeping Bing from having full access to videos on YouTube, a Google-owned site, angling to keep Bing from searching certain online books, and restricting how YouTube functions on Microsoft’s smartphone operating system, among other practices.

At Wednesday's hearing, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman accused Google of scrubbing its content without permission and then threatening that it wouldn't appear on search results if it didn't play ball with Google Places. He said that 75 percent of Yelp's traffic comes through Google.

Competitors accuse Google of gaming its search results to favor Google products. Schmidt told the panel that he "didn't believe" that Google did so, an answer Minnesota Democrat Al Franken pounced on.

After the hearing, HuffPost asked Schmidt if Google favors Google products in it ten-link search rankings. "Again, I get that question and it's hard to explain, so let me try again. What happens with the answers we get is we've learned to generate a couple of different kinds of answers -- the internal term is called universal search. So, for example, after a few links we'll get -- we'll show a summary result of something. So that's not favoring a result, it's sort of adding value to the result. So the answer is no to the favoring, but yes to the using-every-part-of-our-computational-capability-to-produce-sophisticated answers," he said. Why does a search for email return Gmail as the first answer?

"I can assure you there's no preference for Gmail in that situation," he said.

With Bing hemorrhaging $2 billion a year and Google making tremendous inroads into the smartphone market, Microsoft has regrouped, teaming up with other corporate content kingpins on Capitol Hill to push for an extremely restrictive set of patent and copyright legislation -- an intra-business battle being fought on ideological and political grounds.

For companies like Google that make their money by conveying information -- whether they own the rights to it or not -- to consumers rather than producing it, flexible or even anarchistic intellectual property laws are ideal. No search engine wants to be held legally liable for informing Internet users about websites dedicated to illegal movie downloads, scanned books, pirated software, counterfeit handbags or generic drugs that ignore an American patent.

And Google's sheer dominance in the search engine market makes it a critical target for big film studios and major record labels that have had trouble adjusting to the digital age. For many people looking for free movies or music, a Google search is the first step in the download process.

The more severe the piracy penalties, after all, the bigger the profits for Sony, Fox and Warner Brothers. And while many Silicon Valley tech giants have frowned on government Internet restrictions, Microsoft has led the charge in allying software firms with old school content creators.

Nowhere is this more evident than the PROTECT IP Act, authored by Sen. Leahy. Loathed by open source activists, the bill would force Google to censor websites the federal government deems intellectual property abusers from its search results, and grant the Department of Justice the power to unilaterally shutdown piracy websites without judicial review -- giving the U.S. government the same power over commercial speech that the Chinese government has over political speech.

For Google, this is an English-language rerun of its four-year China nightmare. Again a powerful government wants the company to be complicit in its spying activities. And again, a government wants to dictate to Google what it can and cannot link to as a search engine. For record labels, it's a replay of the 1990s fight against music download site Napster, with the government forcibly enlisting search engine companies in its crackdown on Napster copycats.

Schmidt defended his company against charges that it directs users to piracy websites during Wednesday's hearing, couching the IP debate in terms of censorship that Chinese dissidents would understand. "We have to represent the web as it is, as opposed to the way we wish it to be. We try to avoid censoring or deleting things," he said, suggesting that a more sensible public policy would be for law enforcement to go after piracy sites directly, rather than force Google to spy on websites or block search results. "Let's say, you know, 'imastealingsite.com,' we can identify that because we can do some kind of a test for trademark violation. That company can then surface as another site ... so it's a whack-a-mole problem."

Major record labels and Hollywood movie studios have never been shy about their opposition to free downloads; software companies have been far less vocal. As the PROTECT IP bill has progressed through Congress, the formal industry letters to lawmakers announcing support for the bill have generally not included signatures from Silicon Valley heavyweights. The promise of free knowledge and private-sector innovation, after all, was what originally attracted many of the tech industry's best and brightest to the software realm. The industry is still imbued with a worldview best captured by Gilmore's Law, a maxim laid out by John Gilmore, who made a fortune as an early developer for Sun Microsystems, where Schmidt started: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." That ethic is difficult to square with corporate lobbying for Internet censorship.

But from a reputation standpoint, Microsoft has little to lose. The company was already viewed as a tech thug for the Internet Explorer marketing that brought the company antitrust scrutiny during the Clinton years. Microsoft has thrown in its lot with the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America in supporting the PROTECT IP Act, a key umbrella group representing software providers followed suit. Microsoft has even leveraged its support into a formal position from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- the foremost lobbying front-group in the United States for corporate behemoths. While the secretive Chamber writes letters advocating its full-throated support for PROTECT IP, it's not clear to the public just which elements of the Chamber's membership are behind the effort.

Google is taking a beating. Eight of Leahy's 20 largest career campaign donors are companies whose bread and butter is providing copyrighted materiel. They've been good for over $590,000 over the course of his political career, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. His top contributor, Time Warner, has also cast him in cameo roles in three films, most recently "The Dark Knight" -- pirated copies of which are no doubt available throughout China.

So Google has launched a public relations battle, appealing to Americans' sense of freedom while portraying itself as a target of government oppression. In May, Schmidt gave a speech in London calling the bill a free speech "disaster" that his company would not comply with if it were made law. Schmidt said Google would not spy on domain name services -- registries for website names -- for the federal government, nor would it report rogue sites to the Department of Justice. "It sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say 'I don't like free speech so I'll whack off all those DNSs' -- that country would be China."

This type of rhetoric packs a punch when it comes from a company that officially exited the Chinese market after the government raided its databases to oppress political dissidents. But when Google first went to China, it was not nearly so averse to censorship, officially accepting Communist party restrictions so long as the promise for long-term profit was present. When Google was hacked, however, the Chinese government not only accessed information on Gmail users, it copied key source code from the company. Google's intellectual property had been stolen, and it left China shortly thereafter.

That's Google's story, anyway. Shortly after Google's righteous rejection of China, the company began sending signals to the market that it wasn't entirely abandoning the largest potential consumer base in the world. The company still employs hundreds of people inside China and continues to provide Android smartphones to the country, where it has a tremendous share of the mobile market. It's computer-based search engine, by contrast, had been unable to make serious inroads against Baidu over nearly five years, a fact which helps explain Google's surge of morality on search that curiously does not apply to its mobile business. Google continues to post hiring videos emphasizing its Android mobile platform at its google.cn website:

Translated, the recruitment video implores Chinese job seekers: "Join us, innovate together. We have a very simple talent strategy here: We invite excellent talents to join us and realize their dreams. We appreciate diligent work, a pleasant working environment and the innovative ability inspired by the mixture of talents with diverse backgrounds. We have Olympic athletes, crossword puzzle champions, professional chefs and independent film producers. Wherever your work location is, we believe you will be inspired to reach your self-transcending glory. Google has been ranked top 10 among 'Ideal Employers of Chinese college graduates' by Universum for five consecutive years since 2006, and we have been ranked top 10 among 'Best Employers of Chinese college graduates' by ChinaHR since 2008. Google China looks forward to your joining. Let's fulfill more dreams together."

Nevertheless, Google continues to cash its freedom chips in the United States, a platform bolstered by the company's "Don't Be Evil" slogan and its CEO, who commutes to the office via skateboard. For advocates of the traditional Internet, however, recent intellectual property fights in the U.S. create cause for concern. The PROTECT IP Act seeks to crack down on copyright violations -- areas in which a specific branded product is distributed without permission -- a pirated copy of Microsoft software, for instance. A patent, by contrast, grants exclusive rights to the very idea behind a device -- the whole notion of a web browser, perhaps. These software patents have long been maligned in Silicon Valley for hampering innovation. A patent creates a monopoly, and in the fast-moving world of software, a broad patent on the very idea of a certain form of computing makes it difficult to improve on the innovations of others. The sheer flimsiness of many software patents has compounded the problem -- the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office doesn't even require software patent seekers to present it with actual code.

Armed with such patents, lawsuit specialists can target tech giants and secure huge judgements in court, or force lucrative settlements. In the smartphone market, where a single device can involve literally thousands of individual patents, the potential for lawsuit abuse is extreme. This kind of activity was once considered shameful in the tech community, but as the patent reform bill designed to combat this behavior disintegrated in Congress,, tech firms started shifting their strategies. Microsoft started buying up patents. And as Google's Android platform rocketed to the top of the mobile market, Microsoft started launching lawsuits against companies that manufactured phones using Google technology. HTC, a company which makes most of its phones in China, currently pays Microsoft $5.00 for every Android-based phone it sells.

Google has railed against these lawsuits in court and in Capitol Hill backrooms. And even as Schmidt continues to officially blast the patent regime as a barrier to innovation, his company is actively acquiring patents that would enable it to launch lawsuits of its own. After buying the Motorola cell phone maker and its huge patent portfolio, Google quietly transferred nine key patents to HTC, which HTC immediately deployed in a lawsuit against Apple. After acquiring 17,000 patents from it's Motorola merger, Google now has ample ammunition to retaliate against Microsoft.

Google runs an exceptional public relations campaign and has an appealing message for both consumers and intellectuals: more free stuff and easy access to knowledge. Three years ago, few would have believed the company would have exited the search engine game in China while dominating the smartphone market. And the debate has critical implications for democratic principles. While Microsoft always made clear that it intended to dominate software markets in any way it could, Google's market isn't software -- it's knowledge. If Google wins the domestic intellectual property war and fends off antitrust scrutiny, there's no telling how its business will adapt to the new system in which it enjoys total market dominance.

"Google has managed to be more ambiguous," says Bert Foer, President of the American Antitrust Institute. "Microsoft would come at you like a fullback up the middle. Google is more like a tailback. You don't know which way he's gonna cut."

Bianca Bosker, Tyler Kingkade and Hayley Miller contributed reporting.

DISCLOSURE: The Huffington Post is owned by AOL, which also owns MapQuest, as well as other Google and Microsoft competitors. AOL's search function is powered by Google and HuffPost's internal email is powered by Gmail. This story's reporters occasionally appear on MSNBC, which is part-owned by Microsoft; they do so for free, though they'd rather be paid. This story was written in Google Docs, which we appreciate, but which is still buggy.

Obama Plan To Let Jobless Work For Free Gets Key GOP Backing

2011-09-18T14:51:00Z

WASHINGTON -- While major parts of President Barack Obama's jobs plan are being met with hostility on Capitol Hill, at least one element was welcomed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, on Sunday. That's the president's plan to allow businesses to hire the long-term unemployed for a limited period of time for free.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Ryan raised the plan, modeled after a state program called Georgia Works, in response to a question about aid to states to prevent layoffs of first responders, teachers and other public employees. "We just don't think we should be bailing out state governments," he said. "That's the constitutional responsibility of state governments, not federal governments."

But, he added, he may end up supporting Obama's proposal to expand Georgia Works.

"The Georgia plan sounds pretty interesting, and that's unemployment reform," said Ryan. Much like welfare reform required recipients to show up at job centers or perform other tasks in exchange for aid, "unemployment reform" would require labor for aid.

HuffPost's Arthur Delaney previously found that while the program is popular with businesses that get the free labor, there is little data to recommend it:

The Georgia Department of Labor has said that within three months of participating in a voluntary job training program, nearly two-thirds of trainees found work. The program has been copied by other states, and the White House has indicated it is considering something similar as part of a forthcoming jobs package.
But the 60 percent of workers who participated in the Georgia program and supposedly found steady work may not have done so. The statistic means only that at some point within 90 days after a person completed the training, the person's Social Security number popped up in state payroll data. It doesn't mean the trainee had a job at the 90-day mark; it could even mean that a person worked just one day during those three months.

...

From its 2003 launch to the end of 2010, some 30,866 trainees entered the program, according to data provided to HuffPost by the Georgia Department of Labor. Of that total, 5,089 workers -- 16.4 percent -- were hired by the company that trained them during or at the end of the training period. (The department says that among workers who completed the full eight-week training, the employment rate is 24 percent.)

How does this success rate stack up to the overall rate at which once-unemployed Georgians have gone back to work? It's probably in the same ballpark.

Census Bureau data show that in 2007 and 2008, 15 percent of Georgians who'd been out of work for six months or longer found work within one month of a survey, according to Jesse Rothstein, an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2009 and 2010, the number fell to 10 percent.

So Georgia Works may have given the jobless a boost, but Census numbers don't make for a clean comparison. They're even less helpful for evaluating the 90-day claim. The key difference is that Census numbers are a snapshot of how many people are employed at a given moment, while the Georgia Works numbers only reflect whether someone worked at any point over a longer period of time.

WATCH highlights from this week's Sunday shows:

Obama Plan To Let Jobless Work For Free Gets Key GOP Backing

2011-09-18T14:51:00Z

But, he added, he may end up supporting Obama's proposal to expand Georgia Works.

HuffPost's Arthur Delaney previously found that while the program is popular with businesses that get the free labor, there is little data to recommend it:

The Georgia Department of Labor has said that within three months of participating in a voluntary job training program, nearly two-thirds of trainees found work. The program has been copied by other states, and the White House has indicated it is considering something similar as part of a forthcoming jobs package.
But the 60 percent of workers who participated in the Georgia program and supposedly found steady work may not have done so. The statistic means only that at some point within 90 days after a person completed the training, the person's Social Security number popped up in state payroll data. It doesn't mean the trainee had a job at the 90-day mark; it could even mean that a person worked just one day during those three months.

...

From its 2003 launch to the end of 2010, some 30,866 trainees entered the program, according to data provided to HuffPost by the Georgia Department of Labor. Of that total, 5,089 workers -- 16.4 percent -- were hired by the company that trained them during or at the end of the training period. (The department says that among workers who completed the full eight-week training, the employment rate is 24 percent.)

How does this success rate stack up to the overall rate at which once-unemployed Georgians have gone back to work? It's probably in the same ballpark.

Census Bureau data show that in 2007 and 2008, 15 percent of Georgians who'd been out of work for six months or longer found work within one month of a survey, according to Jesse Rothstein, an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2009 and 2010, the number fell to 10 percent.

So Georgia Works may have given the jobless a boost, but Census numbers don't make for a clean comparison. They're even less helpful for evaluating the 90-day claim. The key difference is that Census numbers are a snapshot of how many people are employed at a given moment, while the Georgia Works numbers only reflect whether someone worked at any point over a longer period of time.

WATCH highlights from this week's Sunday shows:

Paul Ryan, Herman Cain Push For Tax Hikes On Middle Class

2011-09-18T14:24:00Z

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on Sunday that House Republicans would oppose President Barack Obama's payroll tax cuts for both employers and employees, arguing that the policy had already failed to provide a sufficient boost to the economy. "It hasn't worked," Ryan said, suggesting the current temporary tax cut should be allowed to expire, which will amount to a 50 percent tax hike on workers making less than $106,000 per year.

He also said he opposes the president's proposal to require millionaires to pay the same tax rate as the middle class, known as the Buffett plan. "Class warfare might make for good politics, but it makes for rotten economics," Ryan said.

As chairman of the House Budget Committee and the author of a long-term plan that radically alters Medicare and slashes tax rates for the wealthy as well as social spending, Ryan serves as something of an economic spokesman for House Republicans.

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who followed Ryan on "Fox News Sunday," seconded his opposition to the tax on millionaires as well as the payroll tax cut extensions. "It's too little, too late," said Cain.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), appearing later on NBC's "Meet The Press," said he too would oppose taxing millionaires at a higher rate, citing Obama's own comments from 2010, when the president argued that taxes shouldn't be raised during rough economic times. "I think what he said then still applies," McConnell said, insisting that small businesses would be hurt by such a tax plan.

As for the namesake of the Buffett plan, McConnell said that if billionaire investor Warren Buffett feels like he's not paying his fair share, "he should send us a check."

"If Warren Buffett would like to give up some of his benefits, we'd be happy to talk about that," McConnell said, suggesting his benefits be means-tested.

Ryan, while backing a payroll tax hike, nevertheless said that tax hikes cannot be part of the deficit-cutting proposal that the super committee comes up with. As part of his explanation, Ryan made it clear that he sees no difference between raising taxes proactively and allowing tax breaks to expire. "You already have a $1.5 trillion tax increase coming in 2013," he said, referring to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts that were extended by President Obama for two years. Ryan's reference to the expiration as an "increase" gives greater weight to his willingness to let tax cuts for the middle class expire.

Because of the looming Bush tax cut expiration, said Ryan, the super committee should eschew tax hikes. "Why on earth would we go with that, especially when the problem is spending?" he said.

"You're basically saying there's going to be no bargain, no compromise," host Chris Wallace pointed out.

"Clearly, Democrats could work with us" and get $1.5 trillion in spending cuts with no additional revenue, Ryan said. "That shouldn't be that tough."

As for the budgetary woes outside Washington, Ryan said, "We just don't think we should be bailing out state governments." He added, "That's the constitutional responsibility of state governments, not federal governments."

Former President Bill Clinton, appearing on CBS's "Face The Nation," backed Obama's tax hike on millionaires, but suggested that the singular focus should be on job creation, with tax increases on the wealthy coming once the economy improves. "I don't have any objection to talking about it now," said Clinton. "Whether it's good politics or not, it's an honorable thing to do."

Clinton urged passage of the payroll tax cut extension and the creation of an infrastructure bank to fund investments. He also hit at the major drag on the economy. "I don't believe America can return to the full employment days of the '90s until we can clear this bank debt from the mortgage crisis," he said.

WATCH highlights from this week's Sunday shows:

Paul Ryan, Herman Cain Push For Tax Hikes On Middle Class

2011-09-18T14:24:00Z

As for the namesake of the Buffett plan, McConnell said that if billionaire investor Warren Buffett feels like he's not paying his fair share, "he should send us a check."

"If Warren Buffett would like to give up some of his benefits, we'd be happy to talk about that," McConnell said, suggesting his benefits be means-tested.

Because of the looming Bush tax cut expiration, said Ryan, the super committee should eschew tax hikes. "Why on earth would we go with that, especially when the problem is spending?" he said.

"You're basically saying there's going to be no bargain, no compromise," host Chris Wallace pointed out.

"Clearly, Democrats could work with us" and get $1.5 trillion in spending cuts with no additional revenue, Ryan said. "That shouldn't be that tough."

WATCH highlights from this week's Sunday shows:

Perry, Romney Spar Over Social Security 'Ponzi Scheme' Comments

2011-09-13T00:31:58Z

Mitt Romney refused to let Rick Perry off the Social Security hook, challenging him at the start of the GOP debate Monday night to repudiate the position in his book that the old-age insurance program is a "Ponzi scheme" that should be run by the states.

"Do you still believe that Social Security should be ended as a federal program?" Romney asked.

"We should have a conversation," Perry replied.

"We're having that right now," Romney said. "You're running for president."

Perry didn't back down from the Ponzi rhetoric, arguing that "this is a broken system, it has been called a Ponzi scheme long before me."

"The term Ponzi scheme is over the top, unnecessary and frightening to many people," Romney replied.

Perry, as of the end of the exchange, was still holding on to the view that states should take a bigger role in the program -- a policy solution that would end Social Security.

The applause, however, was nearly all on Perry's side.

Just minutes after Perry and Romney's tense exchange, the Perry campaign sent out a press release headlined, "Setting the Record Straight on Social Security."

"While Governor Rick Perry is having an honest conversation with the American people about the future of Social Security, Candidate Mitt Romney is posturing and running from his past positions," writes the Perry camp.

The campaign is trying to argue that Romney has also tried to "scare" senior citizens about the state of Social Security, which the former Massachusetts governor is now accusing Perry of doing.

They point out a passage from "Citizen Romney's" book:

“Let’s look at what would happen if someone in the private sector did a similar thing. Suppose two grandparents created a trust fund, appointed a bank as trustee, and instructed the bank to invest the proceeds of the trust fund so as to provide for their grandchildren’s education. Suppose further that the bank used the proceeds for its own purposes, so that when the grandchildren turned eighteen, there was no money for them to go to college. What would happen to the bankers responsible for misusing the money? They would go to jail. But what has happened to the people responsible for the looming bankruptcy of Social Security? They keep returning to Congress every two years.”

During the debate, Perry said that Romney, in his book, had essentially called Social Security a "criminal" enterprise. The audience applauded loudly.

Romney accused Perry of quoting him inaccurately, responding: "What I said was Congress taking money out of the Social Security trust fund is like criminal, and it is, and it's wrong."

Perry, Romney Spar Over Social Security 'Ponzi Scheme' Comments

2011-09-13T00:31:58Z

"Do you still believe that Social Security should be ended as a federal program?" Romney asked.

"We should have a conversation," Perry replied.

"We're having that right now," Romney said. "You're running for president."

Perry didn't back down from the Ponzi rhetoric, arguing that "this is a broken system, it has been called a Ponzi scheme long before me."

"The term Ponzi scheme is over the top, unnecessary and frightening to many people," Romney replied.

Perry, as of the end of the exchange, was still holding on to the view that states should take a bigger role in the program -- a policy solution that would end Social Security.

The applause, however, was nearly all on Perry's side.

Just minutes after Perry and Romney's tense exchange, the Perry campaign sent out a press release headlined, "Setting the Record Straight on Social Security."

The campaign is trying to argue that Romney has also tried to "scare" senior citizens about the state of Social Security, which the former Massachusetts governor is now accusing Perry of doing.

They point out a passage from "Citizen Romney's" book:

“Let’s look at what would happen if someone in the private sector did a similar thing. Suppose two grandparents created a trust fund, appointed a bank as trustee, and instructed the bank to invest the proceeds of the trust fund so as to provide for their grandchildren’s education. Suppose further that the bank used the proceeds for its own purposes, so that when the grandchildren turned eighteen, there was no money for them to go to college. What would happen to the bankers responsible for misusing the money? They would go to jail. But what has happened to the people responsible for the looming bankruptcy of Social Security? They keep returning to Congress every two years.”

During the debate, Perry said that Romney, in his book, had essentially called Social Security a "criminal" enterprise. The audience applauded loudly.

Romney accused Perry of quoting him inaccurately, responding: "What I said was Congress taking money out of the Social Security trust fund is like criminal, and it is, and it's wrong."

Congressional Republicans Upside Down On Tax Cuts

2011-09-08T16:17:10Z

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans over the past year have threatened to both shut down the government and default on U.S. debt in order to prevent tax hikes. But in January, without congressional action, payroll taxes are set to increase by 50 percent on millions of American workers. The GOP response? A resounding meh.

When President Obama travels to Congress on Thursday to deliver a major jobs speech, he'll be encountering a species previously considered mythical on Capitol Hill: Republicans who don't support tax cuts.

The one-year payroll tax cut was passed as part of the deal that extended Bush-era tax rates through 2012, and Republicans routinely described the potential expiration of that cut as a "tax hike." While the payroll tax cut applies to no more than the first $106,000 in income, the Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthy. But the key difference between the two is the author: The payroll tax cut is Obama's and his alone.

HuffPost approached ten Senate Republicans in the Capitol on Wednesday and only two -- Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Scott Brown (Mass.) -- said they'd support an extension of Obama's payroll tax cut. Both said that such an extension, however, should apply to employers as well as workers, a costly addition to the policy that the White House has objected to. McCain and Brown argue that cutting payroll taxes on employers will free up money they can use to hire workers. But employers, in general, aren't hiring because there is not enough demand in the economy (since consumers don't have enough money) -- not because the companies themselves are short on cash.

An employer-side cut would just increase the amount of money companies are holding on the sidelines, economist Dean Baker argued recently, while an employee-side cut injects demand into the economy by increasing the size of workers' paychecks -- or, in the case of extending the payroll tax cut, by not decreasing them. An analysis by Goldman Sachs warned that letting the tax cut expire could “potentially reduce growth by as much as two-thirds of a percentage point in early 2012.” Macroeconomic Advisers estimated that extending the tax cut could "boost real GDP growth half percentage point over the year, and raise employment 400,000 by the fourth quarter.”

Regardless, the other Republicans HuffPost quizzed said they were either undecided about whether to extend the tax cut, or opposed to the idea.

"My personal view is that the debt is already impacting the economy," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) "If your debt is this large, I think you've gotta be very careful about adding debt." HuffPost asked whether that view put the GOP in the unusual position of advocating that taxes go up on millions of people in January, when the one-year cut expires.

Sessions nodded yes. "It's a difficult thing ... Our country's in a difficult place," he said, adding a rather macabre silver lining: that at least the millions of unemployed Americans won't see their taxes go up. "We'd like to be able to keep the withholding low, but you don't pay it if you're not working, and so we've got a lot of people not working."

Sessions said that the payroll tax cut was never intended to be permanent. "It was promoted as putting more money in people's pockets so they would spend, that's the whole purpose -- not as a permanent tax cut," Sessions said. "I think it was [Sen.] Judd Gregg who said what tends to happen is people use that money to buy things from China."

GOP senators were equally unenthusiastic about business tax credits that have been floated during ongoing discussions about Obama's jobs package.

"The business tax credits? Now how's that different than the corporate jet industry? You should ask him that," said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). Obama has made tax breaks available to the corporate jet industry a mainstay of his rhetorical challenge to Republicans opposed to tax hikes. Blunt is right that the credits could conceivably apply to corporate jet makers, who have protested their treatment by the administration.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), head of the Senate GOP's campaign arm, said tax cuts that aren't permanent won't boost the economy because they'll create "uncertainty."

"The problem is, I'm just not convinced they're going to work. While generally I'm all for keeping taxes low, I'm just not sure that's the best way to get people hiring again. I think what we need is long-term reform of the tax code," he said.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) made a similar point. "I was never a fan of that last time around. I think it's a short term sugar-high today. I think we oughta be looking at policies that create long-term economic growth," he said, echoing rhetoric used by House Republican Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

"I do think it's one of those things we might get a little economic pop from," Thune added, but said that "pop" wouldn't justify the cut's $125 billion price tag.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), in declining to endorse the payroll tax cut extension, managed to question the integrity of the president's word and his ability to speak without a teleprompter in a single sentence. "I've learned until I see something on paper with the president, that it's hard to read on a teleprompter when he's reading and I can't," he said. "I would rather wait to see the whole package and how it works together."

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said she wanted to "wait and see," while Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said he was undecided. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to answer HuffPost's questions, noting that he'd be holding a press conference later on Wednesday. At that briefing, he said that "we're happy to listen to the president's proposals and take them under consideration."

Even the original Republican sponsor of the payroll tax cut, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, said he wasn't sure he'd support an extension, though he left the possibility open. "I don't know," he said. "I was the author of the payroll extension last time around, along with [Sen. Charles] Schumer -- Schumer-Hatch -- but I didn't see much payoff."

Hatch, however, suggested that Republicans might ultimately return to their tax-cut-loving ways. "We'll have to see. I'm not so sure that they won't get on board," he said of his colleagues.

This story has been updated to include economic analysis of the effect of extending the tax cut.