Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R) of Utah (c.), seen here in a file photo, feels your pain on tax day. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File)

Enjoy tax day 2012, next year could be 'Taxageddon'

By David Grant, Staff writer / 04.17.12

Think tax day 2012 is bad? Just wait – tax day 2013 could be a real humdinger.

Not because of the taxes you’ll be doing late into the night of Sunday, April 14, 2013. But because the tax situation for the next year may be a serious, unbridled mess.

Decoder certainly isn’t minimizing this year’s tax pain – what, the government can hire clowns and mind readers and here I am picking up the tab?

“That’s what’s making writing that check for taxpayers today so difficult and so painful,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R) of Utah on a call with reporters. “When they see the waste, fraud and abuse that happens at the GSA and other parts of government it’s just so frustrating to the American people. And it should be.”

But frustrating won’t begin to describe taxpayer pain if almost half a trillion in tax hikes come into being on Jan. 1, 2013. Looming on the horizon are a raft of tax proposals that could blow up in taxpayers faces so immensely that Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue wrote sardonically in a Tuesday op-ed that “Tax Day is upon us – and you should enjoy it. Why? As painful as it may be to write this year’s check to Uncle Sam, it could be the smallest check you’ll write for years to come.”

What’s coming due at year’s end? According to one analysis by a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, nearly $500 billion in tax increases including the following:

• $165 billion from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.
• $124 billion from the expiration of the Social Security payroll tax cut.
• $118 billion from a failure to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax
• Roughly $60 billion from various tax cuts expiring – including stimulus cuts, estate tax cuts, and favorable treatment for businesses that make big purchases.
• $20 billion from tax increases from President Obama’s health-care reform law.

Holy smokes, right? No wonder members of Congress nearly always list heading off what Heritage calls “Taxageddon” as a principal concern. Add to that the fact that Congress has to deal with the budget-slashing sequester and the need to again raise the debt ceiling and December could be harrowing, indeed. 

But while America talks tax turkey today, the chances of fixing the tax code between now and December are slim, says long-time Washington watcher Stan Collender of Qorvis Communications.

Mr. Collender points out that many expect Washington’s best – and perhaps only – opportunity to legislate on tax issues will be the lame duck session between November and year’s end. Between tax day and November, the argument goes, members of Congress will be too distracted by the national political election to make much headway on such tough issues.

That leaves the lame duck. And that’s hardly an auspicious moment for many practical reasons.

While there are seven weeks on the calendar between Election Day and New Year’s Eve, Collender says, that’s really more like four weeks when you account for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and a one-week exhale after the election.

Lame duck sessions are “notoriously difficult” for legislating, Collender points out, as ousted or retiring members and their staff are looking for their next jobs and, eventually, losing their offices to incoming members.

“Some [exiting] members just stop voting, they go home, the leadership can’t force them to do anything,” Collender says. “What are you going to do, take away their committee assignments? It’s difficult to count votes and difficult for leadership to maintain discipline.”

Given a cloudy electoral situation – it’s unlikely one party will sweep Congress and the White House – and the lame duck’s limitations, where will taxpayers be at year’s end? Collender thinks they’ll be left largely in the lurch with short-term extension of current tax law – Bush tax cuts and payroll tax cut, live on! –before Congress returns in January to battle anew.

“Instead of the mother of all lame duck sessions it could be the mother of all disappointments,” Collender says. Americans will be saying, “ ‘Curses! Foiled again!’ and we go on for another six months.”

See you next April.

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President Obama is pictured speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Tuesday. (Susan Walsh/AP)

Tax day at White House: Obama gets big refund. Is that normal?

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.17.12

President Obama released his 2011 tax returns last week, and there’s been lots of scrutiny of his effective tax rate (20.5 percent), whether that’s higher or lower than Mitt Romney’s (higher), what that means for the presidential election, and so forth. But when reading Mr. Obama’s forms on Tuesday in honor of tax day, we noticed something else we found interesting: The US chief executive is getting a humongous refund, by our standards.

That’s right, the Internal Revenue Service owes Barack and Michelle Obama a whopping $24,515. And let’s be honest: Isn’t the state of the refund, or lack thereof, how most of us rate tax day?

When all you have is salary, you get used to your tax payments being withheld, so what really hurts is being forced to write a big check to the government in early April. Conversely, if you're getting cash back, the season suddenly gets all bright and sparkly. As it appears to be in the Obama household.

Yes, we know that it’s better to keep as much of your money as long as possible and that overpaying so as to get a refund isn’t economically optimal. Yes, Obama’s refund is actually a small slice of his family income – only about 3 percent. Spoilsport.

Still, it got us wondering. Is it usual for US presidents to get tax refunds? So we looked it up, via the Tax History Project, which groups the tax returns released by presidents and presidential candidates in one place.

The answer is that the vast majority of known presidential tax returns did indeed result in refunds, with the interesting exception that most recent presidents had to pay the IRS in the year just after or just prior to the start of their terms.

Obama got a $12,334 refund last year and an $8,287 refund the year before that. But in tax year 2007, he got hammered, as he owed the IRS $1,059,826. It was all that book income he earned prior to the election.

George W. Bush owed the IRS in his last year in office, but from 2002 to 2006 he got refunds. In 2003, he got more than $61,451.

In 2001, at the start of his term, Mr. Bush had to pay the man, though not to the extent Obama did. Bush’s April payment that year was only $4,030.

Bill Clinton? All refunds, except for 1992, the year of his election, when he owed $4,085. George H.W. Bush? All refunds, except for 1989, the year after his election, when he owed $3,228.

Same for Ronald Reagan. The only year he had to pay the IRS was 1982, in the middle of his first term, when he coughed up $124,582 for tax day.

There’s a pattern developing here, and if we were suspicious, we’d say that presidential advisers tell new chief executives that it’s better to receive than give, in terms of their taxes. They don’t want to look like they’re not willing to pay their fair share.

Given the size of his finances, Mr. Romney already has good tax advisers, in case you’re wondering. According to the preliminary data he released earlier this year, he’s going to get a refund of about $207,818 for tax year 2011. That would be more than three times larger than any refund check ever sent to an occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, since presidents began releasing their personal tax data.

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In this photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, accompanied by his wife Ann, prepares to speak at the National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis, Friday, April 13. (Michael Conroy/AP)

Mitt Romney's flip-flop on stay-at-home moms: Will it matter?

By Liz Marlantes, Correspondent / 04.16.12

Over the weekend, MSNBC aired a Mitt Romney sound bite that, on the face of it, seemed pretty stunning. Speaking in New Hampshire just four months ago, the candidate was explaining why he favored work requirements for poor women receiving public assistance – even if it ultimately cost the state more money in day-care expenses. The answer? Because they need to experience "the dignity of work."

Here's the full quote:

"While I was [Massachusetts] governor, 85 percent of the people on a form of welfare assistance in my state had no work requirement. And I wanted to increase the work requirement. I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, well that’s heartless. And I said no, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It will cost the state more, providing that day care. But I want the individuals to have the dignity of work."

Why was this comment potentially problematic? Because it came, of course, after several days in which the Romney campaign gleefully scored points off Democrat Hilary Rosen's remark on CNN that stay-at-home mom Ann Romney "never worked a day in her life." As the presidential campaign went into a "mommy wars" time warp, Ms. Romney tweeted that she was proud to have stayed home to raise her five boys, adding, "Believe me, it was hard work."

That set off a furious public discussion in which nearly everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, made the same basic points over and over again: (1) Raising kids is hard work. (2) Staying home is a personal decision that women make based on a variety of factors. (3) But the main factor involved is money – and most women can't afford to do it. 

Despite being a "debate" with no real points of disagreement, it made for a few good news cycles for Mr. Romney. It put his wife – a popular and sympathetic figure – squarely in the public eye for the first time, as a champion of stay-at-home moms. It was one of the campaign's longest stretches on offense yet. And it gave Romney an opening to appeal to women voters, among whom he trails President Obama (by 19 points in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll). Ms. Romney even called the whole flap "an early birthday present."

So now that it's come out that Romney himself actually thinks poor women need "the dignity of work" – and that work doesn't include raising their children – you'd think that would undercut whatever points his campaign may have scored last week.

Yet so far, it appears not. True, liberal blogs have been all over the hypocrisy argument. But the mainstream media have for the most part moved on – instead, focusing mostly Monday on Romney's comments at a weekend fundraiser about which federal departments he might cut, as well as the ever-popular speculation about the vice-presidential search.

It's a perfect example of the fireworks-like media environment that The New York Times's Brian Stelter evoked this weekend, in a piece that characterized political stories as going "from flash to fizzle": They "burn more brightly" but also are "extinguished faster," Mr. Stelter wrote, with "Google search rankings, video view records and Twitter trending topics tell[ing] users when the crowd has moved on."

When the controversy is largely superficial – and artificial – to begin with, it makes it even harder to generate much interest in subsequent revelations involving policy positions. The Rosen-Romney flap was never about policy; it was about stereotypes and a perceived insult. And by the time Romney's actual position on women and work was aired – and shown to run counter to the substance of the argument his campaign seemed to be making – it didn't seem to matter. 

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Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R) of Texas gives a thumbs up to his supporters while leaving the stage at a town hall meeting at Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, Texas, Wednesday. (Lara Solt/The Dallas Morning News/AP)

Why Ron Paul is still in the presidential race

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.16.12

There are a number of compelling reasons why Ron Paul might want to drop his presidential campaign.

First off, Mitt Romney has pretty much won the GOP nomination. That means the single-digit chance Congressman Paul had of sitting in the White House has now fallen to a number perilously close to zero.

Second, the trail is long, and the days are hard. Food is bad and sleep is limited. It can be tough to find the time to get in a good walk in the morning and an afternoon bike ride, as Paul likes to do.

“When I don’t get my adequate amount of exercise I get very grouchy,” admitted Paul last week during an interview with John Stossel on Fox Business News.

But Paul remains in it, if not to win it, then to promote his ideas. He’s long said that he wants to build a political movement as much as anything else, and if you look at his upcoming events, they remain heavy on appearances at colleges, which remain his most fertile ground for winning converts.

On April 18 Paul is scheduled to speak at the University of Rhode Island, for instance. On April 19 he’s supposed to be at Cornell. On April 20 the venue is the University of Pittsburgh.

This emphasis on youth points out one of Paul’s remaining electoral strengths – he’s relatively strong in the 18-to-34 demographic, while presumptive nominee Mr. Romney is relatively weak. A Gallup poll from April 12 shows them about tied in that sub-group, though Romney leads comfortably among GOP voters overall.

This could give Paul some leverage in regard to speaking spots and platform planks leading into the GOP National Convention in Tampa.

“Romney has a significant problem among younger Republican voters ... Romney’s challenge is to capture some of the enthusiasm young Republican voters have for Paul in an attempt to blunt Obama’s strength among this group,” wrote Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport last week.

Paul’s leverage may be enhanced by the fact that he appears to be picking up some former supporters of Rick Santorum, who are turning to him as the means for an anti-Romney protest vote.

For instance, at Colorado’s state GOP convention last weekend, Paul and Santorum supporters joined in a “Conservative Unity Slate” to win national convention delegate spots that the Romney forces had thought would fall to them.

The Paul/Santorum forces won 13 of the Colorado delegates chosen by congressional district. The Romney forces rallied to take at least eight at-large delegates, according to the Denver Post.

Paul’s continuing strategy of focusing on delegates as opposed to straw-poll beauty contests also paid off last week in Minnesota. Of delegates and alternates chosen last week by the Minnesota GOP in congressional district meetings, the Paul forces were “18 for 18: 9 dels/9 alts,” tweeted Pat Anderson, a national committeewoman from Minnesota for the Republican National Committee.

Paul’s campaign crowed about these successes last Saturday, issuing a release saying that the Texas libertarian “achieved consequential delegate wins in Colorado and Minnesota today, affirming his delegate-attainment strategy and auguring a prominent role for Paul at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.”

The fact is, however, that “consequential delegate wins” is in the eye of the beholder. According to the Associated Press delegate tracker, Paul has won 52 delegates. Santorum, in contrast, had 270 when he dropped out. Romney has 684 and counting.

Going forward, Paul is thus facing the somewhat difficult task of continuing a campaign devoted to spreading his ideas without appearing as if he is out-of-touch with electoral reality.

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Jeff Neely of the General Services Administration (GSA) declines to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on 'Addressing GSA's Culture of Wasteful Spending' on Capitol Hill in Washington Monday. (Yuri Gripas/REUTERS)

GSA scandal: Congress gangs up on bureaucrats behaving badly (+video)

By David Grant, Staff writer / 04.16.12

When the General Services Administration (GSA) executive responsible for a 2010 Las Vegas "conference" replete with mind reader and clown (tab to taxpayers: $823,000) came to Washington on Monday, he was flown in on the government dime from California.

Jeffrey Neely, now on administrative leave as GSA's western regional administrator, had been called to appear at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California.

After that flight paid for by the federal government, Mr. Neely repeated pleaded the Fifth Amendment, declining to respond to questions.

"Irony alert," tweeted CNN's Dana Bash.

But readers should also see a "dog and pony show" alert on all the GSA hype for the coming week – really, does Congress need four hearings on the subject in the next three days? Probably not. But the politics are just too good to ignore.

In case you're desperate for wall-to-wall GSA coverage, the schedule is as follows:

• Monday, 1:30 p.m., by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
• Tuesday 8:30 a.m., by the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on economic development, public buildings, and emergency management.
• Wednesday 10 a.m., by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
• Wednesday 2:30 p.m., by the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government.

There is, of course, some scintilla of broader scandal here: The head of the GSA resigned after the administration's inspector general released his report on the Vegas conference, calling spending there "excessive and wasteful."

Excessive and wasteful is absolutely right. But, with unemployment over 8 percent and gas prices pushing $4 a gallon, who is going to miss an opportunity to beat up on Bureaucrats Behaving Badly?

Not President Obama, who "was outraged by the excessive spending, questionable dealings with contractors, and disregard for taxpayer dollars," as White House spokesman Jay Carney put it shortly after the story hit last week.

Not Chairman Issa, who hinted that the Vegas conference is likely to be part of "a pattern of behavior that is costing the American people hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars, and setting a bad example for the rest of the federal workforce” on CBS This Morning on Monday.

Not the top Democrat on the House panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D) of Maryland, who in his opening statement called the lavish GSA spending "indefensible."

With "government waste" about the only thing in Washington that gets bipartisan support for being cut, its no small wonder that both sides of the aisle are piling on.

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A Secret Service agent stands guard as U.S. President Barack Obama departs on the Marine One helicopter for travel to Colombia for the Summit of Americas, from the White House in Washington April 13. (Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS)

Secret Service sex scandal: Could it lead to blackmail? (+video)

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.16.12

If Secret Service agents did indeed cavort with prostitutes in Colombia prior to the Summit of the Americas, could their actions have led to blackmail in future years?

That’s what Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California worried about on Monday morning in the wake of revelations about the incident, which led to the recall of 11 Secret Service agents prior to the summit’s start.

“Well, what we’re concerned about is that failure today can lead to blackmail five, 10, 20 years from now.... If you look at how you get somebody to do something wrong, you do it incrementally – something small, something bigger, something bigger,” said Representative Issa in a Monday morning appearance on "CBS This Morning.”

Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that he’d been told the prostitution scandal was part of a pattern of behavior that included raucus “wheels-up” parties for advance personnel on foreign assignments after the departure of principal officials.

Issa’s panel “will look over the shoulder of the inspector general” as he investigates the scandal, the congressman said.

Could the agents’ actions really have left them open to blackmail? It’s true that the incident was serious one: According to news reports, it involved a “pre-wheels-down” party among advance Secret Service personnel so raucous that employees of the Hotel Caribe had to ask for quiet more than once.

It is not yet clear how many of the 11 recalled agents were involved with prostitutes or how many were married. News reports depict at least one woman who was angered about not being paid and created a disturbance in the hotel in the morning.

It is true that sexual peccadilloes have long been a means by which espionage agencies attempt to embarrass officials from target nations, forcing them into providing sensitive information.

It’s called the “honey trap” in the trade, and it may remain alive and well. The British MI5 counter-intelligence agency several years ago distributed a warning to British banks and other financial institutions that China is engaging in a wide-ranging effort to blackmail Western business people via sexual relationships, according to author Phillip Knightley.

In a 2010 article in Foreign Policy magazine, Mr. Knightley outlined the history of the honey trap, noting among other things that the notorious East German spymaster Markus Wolf had a special division of male “Romeo spies” whose jobs were to try to build relationships with lonely West German female government workers.

But is all that really applicable today? Besides the MI5 warning, the latest incident recounted by Knightley dates from 1986, when Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu was lured out of hiding in London by a female Mossad agent, leading to a 15-year prison sentence in Israel.

In today’s relatively permissive society, it may be hard to believe that a limited peccadillo could lead to treason decades hence. Perhaps Issa’s committee should focus instead on Secret Service competence in general.

On NBC's “Today" show Monday morning, author and Secret Service expert Ronald Kessler said he believed that the agency has been cutting corners for years, doing everything from letting people into White House events without requiring them to walk through metal detectors (remember the Salahis?) to ignoring guidelines for agent physical fitness.

“The agents themselves are generally brave and dedicated, but that’s not the issue.... This is the worst scandal in the history of the Secret Service,” said Mr. Kessler, referring to the Colombia incident.

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President Obama speaks about tax fairness and the economy at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, Tuesday. Obama released his 2011 tax return on Friday. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

President Obama releases tax returns. Does he have to make them public?

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.13.12

President Obama released his 2011 Form 1040 on Friday, revealing that he and his wife, Michelle, paid more than $162,000 in federal taxes on income of $789,674.

The Obamas’ effective tax rate was 20.5 percent, according to the White House. That’s lower than the rate that hits many taxpayers who make less than the first couple, but it’s higher than presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney pays. Earlier this year, the Romney campaign released tax documents indicating that the former Massachusetts governor was planning to pay about 15.4 percent of his (substantially higher) income to Uncle Sam.

The disparity here is due to the fact that most of Mr. Romney’s cash inflow comes from investment income, which is taxed at a much lower rate than is earned income. Mr. Obama’s proposed “Buffett rule,” named after billionaire Warren Buffett, would force those who earn $1 million a year to pay at least 30 percent in taxes, whatever the source of their income – a point the administration was eager to highlight with the release of the Obama family return.

The Buffett rule would not have hit the Obamas this year, since their income was below the $1 million mark. In previous years, however, royalties from his books have pushed Obama’s earnings well into the seven figures.

Obama “believes that people like him should be paying an effective tax rate that is no lower than the rate paid by hard-working middle-class Americans,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney on Friday.

There is no law requiring US presidents, or US presidential aspirants, to release their tax returns to the public. If they choose, White House occupants are entitled to all the privacy in regard to their income that ordinary citizens enjoy.

The custom that presidents do release this information dates to the early 1970s, and the administration of that most maddening of modern-day chief executives, Richard Nixon.

Mr. Nixon’s 1974 resignation over Watergate today obscures the fact that he was also in trouble over how little he had paid in federal taxes.

In an effort to bolster his image, Nixon had boasted at a press conference that he’d been audited by the Internal Revenue Service and found clean. Long story short, this led to pressure to release his returns, Nixon’s developing political weakness led him to comply, and reporters discovered that he’d paid only $6,000 in taxes on cumulative income of $790,000 from 1970 to 1972, due to big deductions he’d taken on donating his vice-presidential papers to charity (among other things).

Upon further review, the IRS decided that Nixon owed $465,000 in back taxes.

Following Nixon’s resignation, new President Ford had to restore faith in the US system of government. In 1976, during the presidential campaign, he released his tax returns.

Jimmy Carter, after he was elected, followed suit, as has every president since.

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, wave as they leave at an election night event in Schaumburg, Ill., last month. (Nam Y. Huh/AP/File)

Ann Romney flap: Will it help Mitt Romney score points with women?

By Liz Marlantes, Correspondent / 04.13.12

The brouhaha over Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney having "never worked a day in her life" is now well into Day 2.

It may have been a manufactured controversy (as we wrote Thursday, Ms. Rosen wasn't really criticizing Ms. Romney's choice to stay home, but arguing that her wealth and privilege – including the fact that she was financially free to stay home with her sons – is not the experience of most American women). But manufactured or not, it's certainly received a lot of media attention.

So will this episode play to Mitt Romney's advantage in any substantial way? And specifically, will it help him among women voters who, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, have recently swung even further toward President Obama, backing him by a 19-point margin?

The short answer: It may not do much, if anything, to erase the overall gender gap. But it may help Mr. Romney rally conservative women behind his candidacy.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just over 70 percent of women with at least one child under the age of 18 are in the labor force – meaning they have a paying job or are still looking for one (underscoring Rosen's point that choosing to stay home with kids is an economic luxury most women don't have).

Women who identify themselves as "homemakers" are already 30 percent more likely to identify as Republican, according to Scarborough Research. And the top five locales for stay-at-home moms in the US are among the most conservative spots in the country: Harlingen, Texas (17 percent of the female residents are stay-at-home moms), Salt Lake City (17 percent), Dallas (14 percent), Bakersfield, Calif. (14 percent), and Houston (13 percent). 

These are all areas where, needless to say, Romney is likely to beat Obama handily in the fall. But they are also areas (with the exception of Salt Lake City) where Romney may not have been the first choice among conservatives – and where, despite having the nomination essentially locked up, he could use a boost in enthusiasm for his candidacy.

This stay-at-home-mom flap may have helped do just that.

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People watch a TV news program showing North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un at Naha airport, Okinawa, southern Japan, April 13. North Korea fired a long-range rocket early Friday, which later crashed into the ocean. (Kyodo News/AP)

North Korean missile launch failure: what it means for West (+video)

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.13.12

A North Korean satellite launch on Friday ended in epic failure as the booster rocket broke up over the Yellow Sea, embarrassing the Pyongyang regime at the moment it is celebrating the 100th birthday of its late founder, Kim Il-sung.

Earlier in the week, normally secretive North Korean officials had bused foreign journalists to the launch site of the Unha-3, or Galaxy-3, in an effort to show off the state of their space technology. In the end this display of rare openness backfired, as North Korean state media four hours after launch admitted that their Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite had not reached its preset orbit.

North Korea’s orbital attempt had been condemned by Group of Eight foreign ministers before the “go” button was pushed. The Obama administration had already announced that because of the launch, it was suspending a planned program to exchange food aid for a rollback in North Korea’s nuclear program.

“Despite the failure of its attempted missile launch, North Korea’s provocative action threatens regional security, violates international law and contravenes its own recent commitments,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney in a statement. “While this action is not surprising given North Korea’s pattern of aggressive behavior, any missile activity by North Korea is of concern to the international community.”

What’s the meaning of this malfunction for the West? After all, the hermit kingdom of East Asia is as unpredictable as its military uniforms are drab.

Washington’s snap reaction to the misfire contained decidedly mixed emotions. On the one hand there was relief, as the rocket’s failure confirmed that North Korea has yet to master the difficult task of launching stuff into orbit. After all, a nuclear-armed Pyongyang is one thing; a nuclear-armed and ICBM-capable Pyongyang is quite another.

“I keep saying the same thing to reporters: launching rockets is hard & [North Korea] isn’t good at it,” tweeted Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., shortly after the rocket failure.

Redstone, the first US space rocket, failed in nine of its first 10 launches, Dr. Lewis pointed out.

On the other hand, no nation likes public embarrassment, and that may go double for a dictatorial regime that has shown no compunction about letting its people starve while pouring resources into the military.

The test failure constitutes a humiliating setback for North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, writes Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York. He and the nation’s military could well turn to some other provocative act to try to signal his emergence and consolidate his authority.

“If history is any guide, this suggests that a test of a nuclear warhead or some sort of aggressive military action – for example, an artillery strike – against South Korea could be in the offing,” writes Dr. Haas in a CFR commentary.

Finally, the North Korean rocket flap will feed the longstanding Washington debate over whether and how to engage North Korea in productive discussions. 

The Obama administration for months had worked on a deal that called for the United States to provide 240,000 tons of food assistance in return for a number of concessions, including a North Korean missile-test moratorium. The US had been set to announce the deal last December, but then North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il died, setting back negotiations.

Following further talks in China, on Feb. 29 the US and North Korea issued separate statements outlining what each side thought they’d agreed to. While the US mentioned a moratorium on missile launches, the North Koreans did not.

Perhaps North Korea felt its forthcoming “satellite” launch did not qualify as a “missile” test. Perhaps North Korean officials knew that the US would view the upcoming test as a deal breaker, and they just wanted to see how the White House would react.

Whatever Pyongyang’s intentions, the disparity between the two sides' summaries of the talks “led many close observers to believe the administration erred by not getting Pyongyang to commit to canceling the launch in writing,” writes Josh Rogin in Foreign Policy magazine’s The Cable blog.

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