posted at 1:00 pm on July 24, 2011 by Tina Korbe
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Tim Pawlenty’s campaign manager yesterday sent out an e-mail outlining Pawlenty’s accomplishments and assuring supporters that the former Minnesota governor’s fan club will continue to grow, while enthusiasm for other candidates — most implicitly, Michele Bachmann — will fade.

“In 2008, voters elected a member of Congress with no executive experience. We can’t afford the cost of inexperience any longer, and Iowans are getting that,” Ayers wrote. “[A]s more Republican primary voters start to tune in to the race, they are finding out that the governor’s record and message will stand the test [of] a brutal campaign. Other candidates’ records (or lack thereof), and plans for the future (or lack thereof) won’t.”

Even though Ayers never mentions Bachmann by name, it’s clear she’s the primary object of his statements.

Pawlenty’s persistent picking at Bachmann has drawn so much press attention that some even questioned whether the Pawlenty campaign planted the story of Bachmann’s supposedly “incapacitating” migraines. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin explains how that insinuation — and the Pawlenty campaign’s failure to completely dispense with it — continues to plague Pawlenty’s prospects:

    In essence, the campaign’s defense is that they let the press run with a story without effectively rebutting it. If that is the case, and there is no definitive proof at this point to suggest otherwise, this will only multiply concerns that Pawlenty’s campaign is not firing on all cylinders. In any event, the issue has now created another worrisome distraction for Pawlenty, who has failed to make a dent in the polls and needs to finish near the top of the pack in Ames.

Meantime, Bachmann’s own handling of the headache issue has actually served her well. This weekend, she even slipped in a witty quip about her “condition” during an Iowa appearance:

    Michele Bachmann went beyond her prepared statement about her migraines during an Iowa appearance today, making a joke about the story that dominated the 2012 coverage for much of last week:

    “This week, they were talking about me and headaches. All I want you to know is I’ve been giving a lot more headaches in Washington than I’ve been getting,” she joked to laughter and raucous applause. … “And as president of the United States, I intend to give those big power brokers a lot more headaches, because we’re going to give the country back to you.”

Pawlenty’s persevering criticisms of a competitor continue to betray insecurity. Ed eloquently defended candidates’ rights to question their competitors’ records — and I initially conceded Bachmann’s migraines to be a legitimate cause for concern (at least until her doctor settled the issue definitively) and praised T-Paw’s common-sense quote about the requirements of the presidency — but, at this point, if I were Pawlenty, I would steer as far away from any mention of Bachmann — explicit or implicit — as I could manage. He doesn’t appear to be hurting Bachmann, but he is denting the best shield he has against attacks against him: His reputation as a stand-up guy who’s running on his own merits, not money or a popular image. He’s at his best when he talks policy, not petty quibbles.

posted at 12:00 pm on July 24, 2011 by Jazz Shaw

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President Obama is under attack these days from all manner of nasty conservatives who don’t care for his liberal, big spending ways. They seem to have found an unlikely ally, though, in the person of the only officially declared socialist in Congress… Bernie Sanders. (Emphasis in original.)

    SANDERS: Brian, believe me, I wish I had the answer to your question. Let me just suggest this. I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president; who believe that, with regard to Social Security and a number of other issues, he said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else as a president; who cannot believe how weak he has been, for whatever reason, in negotiating with Republicans and there’s deep disappointment. So my suggestion is, I think one of the reasons the president has been able to move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing. [...] So I would say to Ryan [sic] discouragement is not an option. I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.

It’s hard to say how much impact this will have, because traditionally Sanders hasn’t enjoyed a tremendous amount of influence outside his own state. But it is a sign of growing discontent with the political arm of his party. For better or worse, Obama is offering up some spending cuts which will effectively take the legs out from under most of the advertisements congressional Democrats are planning on running next year.

It’s difficult to talk about “Republicans destroying Medicare and Social Security as we know it” during the campaign if the titular leader of your party has just forced a vote on you to cut it yourself. It’s even tougher to talk about the need to “tax the rich” so everyone can “pay their fair share” if your President cuts deals to enact even bigger tax cuts than his predecessor. (Cuts which he already signed on to extending.)

Sanders can’t very well run against Obama himself in a primary since he’s not a registered Democrat. (Though, in theory, he could sign up at any time this year and still do it.) I suppose he’s expecting an actual Democrat to step up to the plate and do it for the sake of stopping Obama from running to the middle in a Clinton like move to secure a second term. Even so, given the President’s currently tanking numbers, I don’t expect a long line of Democratic leaders to step up and attempt this.

posted at 3:10 pm on July 22, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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CNN’s latest look at the Republican primary fight shows a big move being made by the man who hasn’t made his big move yet.  Mitt Romney remains in first place at 16%, but only within the margin of error, as a group of speculative candidates have crowded right behind him.  Texas Governor Rick Perry finishes second with 14%, and that’s not all:

    As Texas Gov. Rick Perry comes closer to jumping into the race for the White House, he’s also close to the top of a new national survey in the battle for the GOP presidential nomination.

    A CNN/ORC International Poll released Friday indicates that 14% of Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP pick Perry as their first choice for their party’s nomination, just two points behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s making his second bid for the White House.

    Romney’s two point margin over Perry is within the survey’s sampling error.

Right behind Perry come Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani, both at 13% and both within the MOE, too.  None of these close finishers have actually declared a candidacy, which means that 40% of survey respondents not only are dissatisfied with the current lineup, they’ve picked non-candidates in their stead.  That’s not good news for Romney, whose high profile from the 2007-8 campaign means that the problem isn’t a lack of familiarity with the electorate. Only 14% declare themselves “very satisfied” with the field, less than half of those who are either not very satisfied or not satisfied at all with the field (34%).

Bachmann finishes at 12%, the last candidate in double digits.  Tim Pawlenty only gets 3% of the survey respondents’ endorsement, falling behind Ron Paul, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich, which puts a lot of pressure on Pawlenty to score big in next month’s Ames straw poll.  Curiously, when Rick Perry gets removed from the list of choices, Bachmann scores best, picking up three points to finish tied for second with Palin at 15%.

Among independents, there are some surprising results.  Mitt Romney finishes third at 12%, where Giuliani and Perry tie for second at 14% — and Bachmann wins at 15%.  Bachmann comes in third among self-professed conservatives at 13%, with Romney beating her at 16%, but getting edged by Perry at 17%.  Among both groups, Palin comes in fourth place.   Not surprisingly, Perry wins the South handily, 21% to the 13% for Romney and, er, Giuliani? Romney and Giuliani also tie for first in the suburban demographic at 14%, with Perry close behind at 13%.

Clearly, Perry will be a force if and when he enters the race.  If he’s the last person in, he may find even wider support, because right now it appears that Republicans are still holding their breath.

posted at 7:20 pm on July 21, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Tina touched on this in the previous post, but it’s important enough to look into the numbers.  Harry Reid might consider the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act the worst piece of legislation in the history of, well, legislation, but he doesn’t get much company among American adults.  In the latest CNN poll, two-thirds of voters favor the idea of tying a raise in the debt ceiling to spending caps and a balanced budget amendment, and this isn’t a survey of conservative-leaning likely voters, either.  However, if you expect the CNN story about its own poll to highlight this result, then you obviously haven’t been reading CNN long (via Poor Richard’s News):

    Americans are hungry for a solution to the debt ceiling debate but there is a big partisan divide that isn’t going to make a solution easy to achieve, according to a new national survey.

    And a CNN/ORC International Poll also indicates that while Democrats and independent voters are open to a number of different approaches, Republicans draw the line at tax increases, and many of them oppose raising the nation’s debt ceiling under any circumstances.

    “That may create a problem for the Republican party, because most Americans think that GOP has been acting irresponsibly in the debt ceiling talks and they will blame congressional Republicans, not President Barack Obama, if no action is taken on the debt ceiling by August 2,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

One has to go thirteen paragraphs into the story to find CNN addressing this at all:

    Republicans like the “cut, cap, and balance” approach to the debt ceiling, as do Democrats and independents. Most Americans support a balanced budget amendment, and most, but not as many, think an amendment is necessary to get federal spending under control. A balanced budget amendment passed the House earlier this week, but a vote in the Senate is expected to fail.

Er, yeah.  In other words, a consensus exists across all political lines that the CCB/BBA approach would be a good idea.  When one scrolls down to the crosstab sections of the raw data, the consensus becomes very, very clear.  The CCB/BBA approach wins majorities in every single demographic — including self-described liberals.  Sixty-three percent of Democrats back the House bill.  The least supportive age demographic is 50-64YOs at 62/37; the least supportive regional demographic is the Midwest at 61/39.  Even those who express opposition to the Tea Party supports it 53/47.

In other words, it’s a clean sweep.  Simply put, there is no political demographic at all where the CCB/BBA doesn’t get majority support.  The BBA on its own does even better.  It gets 3-1 support (74/24), and except for those Tea Party opponents (56%) and self-professed liberals (61/37), doesn’t get below 70% support in any demographic.

Guess what doesn’t get much support?  The McConnell plan.  Respondents rejected the idea of letting Obama raise the debt ceiling on his own, 34/65.  Not one single demographic supports the idea, not even Democrats (40/60) or liberals (34/65).

To quote Barack Obama, the American people are sold — on the Republican plan passed in the House to deal with the debt-ceiling and spending crises.  Too bad CNN buried the lede.

posted at 7:40 pm on July 22, 2011 by Tina Korbe
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This morning, Politico reported in its mass “Huddle” e-mail that House Republican leadership kicked one freshman Congressman — Arizona Rep. David Schweikert — off the whip team for supposedly switching his vote on an unspecified piece of legislation. Actually, a source close to Schweikert’s office says, that’s not quite accurate.

This is what the Politico e-mail said:

    HUDDLE SCOOP: FROSH KICKED OFF WHIP TEAM – Rep. David Schweikert, a freshman from Arizona, was removed from the Republican whip team — the group of lawmakers who help round up votes for the leadership — for what sources say is a violation of the first rule of the whip club. The rule: Don’t promise to vote one way and then vote the other way. Sources declined to specify which vote cost Schweikert his seat at the table, but he did vote ‘no’ on the Energy and Water Appropriations bill last Friday. Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam pointed Huddle to Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s office when asked about the episode. ‘This is a whip team family issue,” McCarthy spokeswoman Erica Elliott said.

It’s true Schweikert — ranked one of the most conservative freshmen in the House — has disagreed with leadership on various issues. And he did feel unwelcome on the whip team, the source says, but the decision to leave was ultimately his.

“He’s been pretty clear and pretty adamant that nobody can buy his vote, so he was a little frustrated with the way leadership asked him to vote on certain occasions,” the source said. “So, he decided it would be best for him to step out and leave the whip team because he couldn’t align with them in certain areas. In no way, shape or form did leadership kick him out, but they made it a pretty inhospitable environment for him to actually vote his conscience and not buy his vote on the whip team. He still supports top leadership.”

Schweikert will also still remain an involved freshman. He’s the vice chairman of the Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee of Financial Services and he’s been “working night and day on reforming GNCs,” as well as on efforts to reform the Dodd-Frank financial regulation legislation (itself supposedly a reform bill!).

He’s also focused on ensuring the best possible outcome of the debt negotiations. Even after the Senate failed Cut, Cap and Balance, Schweikert supports it as the House plan.

“He is focused solely on Cut, Cap and Balance,” the source said. “He hopes he can still play a role in working with leadership and other freshmen that want to get the message out that the Democrats have misled the American people and the president has no plan for the country.”

July 23, 2011, 1:45 AM EDT
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By Julie Hirschfeld Davis

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, running out of time to strike a deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, had some bad news for House Speaker John Boehner on July 20.

The tax overhaul they had been discussing to raise $800 billion in revenue over a decade had to be bigger, Obama told Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor during an evening meeting in the Oval Office. Obama’s new offer: $1.2 trillion.

A new proposal by the “Gang of Six,” a bipartisan group of senators who were calling for $3.7 trillion in budget savings over 10 years to slash the deficit, had changed the dynamics of the accord that Obama and Boehner had been negotiating in closed-door talks for weeks, the president told the speaker.

The group, praised by both senior Republicans and Democrats for its mix of spending cuts and tax increases, proposed a bigger revenue target than Obama and Boehner were considering, according to officials on Capitol Hill and at the White House who gave their accounts of the talks on condition of anonymity.

And Obama, who had called for months for the sort of grand bargain the gang was offering, was going to have a hard time selling a deal that stopped short of that.

The turnabout ultimately led Boehner to walk out of the talks, he said last night, unraveling the progress that had been made toward a sweeping compromise to slice $3.5 trillion from the nation’s debt and raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling before a default threatened Aug. 2.

Back to Beginning

The breakdown sent both sides back to the beginning with little room left to reach a deal to boost the nation’s borrowing authority in time to head off the default. Congressional leaders from both parties are to meet today at the White House in an effort to reach an accord.

“It’s the president who walked away from his agreement and demanded more money at the last minute,” Boehner, of Ohio, told reporters at an evening news conference on Capitol Hill, hours after calling Obama to tell him he was abandoning their negotiations. “Dealing with the White House is like dealing with a bowl of jello.”

It was the final breakdown in the private negotiations between Obama and Boehner over a politically challenging debt- reduction agreement both were eager to reach.

“We had very intense negotiations,” Obama said last night. “I’ve been left at the altar now a couple of times.”

The courtship began June 18, when Obama, 49, invited Boehner, 61, for a round of golf at Andrews Air Force Base. The two teamed up against Vice President Joe Biden, who was spearheading bipartisan talks on the deficit with congressional leaders, and Ohio Governor John Kasich, a friend of Boehner’s.

Bonding Session

More bonding session than policy debate, the president and the speaker beat Kasich and Biden, winning $2 each. Still, the golf date proved a turning point, spurring Obama and Boehner to begin one-on-one talks on a broad compromise. Four days later, Boehner was at the White House meeting privately with Obama to sketch out what the deal could look like.

The following day, Cantor, a Virginia Republican who has cultivated a close relationship with Tea Party-backed lawmakers leading the call for spending cuts, abandoned the bipartisan Biden-led talks after a half-dozen meetings. He said Democrats’ insistence on raising taxes made an agreement impossible. The group had been making slow but steady progress, identifying more than $1 trillion in spending cuts the two parties could agree on.

The following week, Obama held a news conference in which he accused Republicans of siding with corporate-jet owners over children and the elderly in the negotiations, and compared Congress’s work ethic unfavorably with that of his pre-teen daughters.

Dire Consequences

“The yellow light is flashing,” Obama said during the June 30 news conference, warning of dire consequences if Congress didn’t raise the borrowing limit before Aug. 2. Standard & Poor’s said it would downgrade U.S. debt to junk status in the event of a default, and the Senate canceled its July 4 recess to continue talking.

The following Sunday, July 3, Boehner and Obama met secretly at the White House to continue their talks. Enough progress was made that Obama appeared at a White House briefing on July 5 to say the nation had “a unique opportunity to do something big to tackle our deficit,” and announce he was summoning congressional leaders from both parties for talks at the White House July 7.

At the roughly 90-minute meeting, Obama polled congressional leaders about what kind of deal they were seeking -- a limited one of between $2 trillion and $2.5 trillion over a decade, a medium-size agreement yielding about $3 trillion, or a big deal to cut $4 trillion off the debt.

Obama and Boehner both wanted to go big.

‘No Imminent Deal’

Still, Boehner -- cognizant of intense opposition among Republicans to any agreement that raised taxes -- cautioned that there was “no imminent deal about to happen,” saying there remained “serious disagreements.”

“We are this far apart,” Boehner told reporters, spreading his arms to indicate the gulf between himself and the president. Yet behind the scenes, his staff and Obama’s were beginning to exchange paper on the contours of a compromise to bridge that divide.

The White House was willing to consider major changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, including benefit cuts, that had previously been considered off-limits. Boehner was willing to discuss a tax overhaul that would raise revenue, until then dismissed by the Republicans as a tax increase.

Boehner’s aides, including Chief of Staff Barry Jackson and Policy Director Brett Loper, were haggling with Obama’s budget director Jack Lew and legislative liaison Rob Nabors on the details. Resistance was brewing in both parties to such a deal.

Pelosi Displeased

Meeting at the White House with Obama on July 8, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California vented her displeasure about the prospect of including Social Security and Medicare cuts in any deal, and told him such a package wouldn’t garner support among congressional Democrats.

On Capitol Hill, Boehner and other House leaders held a press conference to reiterate their opposition to tax increases. Still, negotiations continued into Saturday morning July 9, when a round of negotiating among Boehner’s and Obama’s aides yielded little progress in breaking remaining stalemates over details of the tax rewrite and entitlement cuts.

Later that day, Boehner phoned the president at Camp David to tell him he was pulling the plug on a broad deal and would seek a more limited measure.

“Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt-reduction agreement without tax hikes,” Boehner said in a statement after the call.

No Stopgap Deal

Obama was still pressing for a broad agreement. He called a news conference on July 11 in which he ruled out the idea of signing a stopgap debt-limit boost and argued that the time was ripe for a major compromise to reduce the debt, whatever the political difficulties.

“We might as well do it now -- pull off the Band-Aid, eat our peas,” he said.

That didn’t stop Republican resistance. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky proposed a fallback plan on July 12 -- a “last choice” option, he called it -- that would allow Obama to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling $2.4 trillion in installments, requiring that the president lay out the same amount of spending cuts and giving Republicans several opportunities to vote “no.”

At the close of a White House meeting July 13, Cantor pressed Obama about a shorter-term debt measure, prompting a testy response from the usually low-key president.

More Than Reagan

Leaning back from the table, Obama told Cantor that he’d been personally negotiating the details of the debt deal for weeks -- more than Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush would have done -- because he wanted to reach a deal that was important for the country. If Republicans sent him legislation he couldn’t accept, he’d veto it and take it to the American people, Obama said before closing the meeting.

Republicans announced they would move forward the next week with legislation that would slash spending, cap future expenditures, and condition a $2.4 trillion debt-ceiling increase on passage of a balanced budget constitutional amendment. Behind the scenes, though, Boehner and Cantor began serious talks with Obama’s staff on a major compromise.

The House Republicans invited Obama’s chief of staff Bill Daley and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Boehner’s Capitol office suite on July 15 for a quiet meeting on a framework for a tax overhaul, according to House Republican leadership aides.

Cutting Medicare

Over coffee and bagels at the White House July 17, with Obama popping in periodically to check their progress, the four negotiators, now joined by Lew, moved toward a deal to slash discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion over a decade and set a process for overhauling entitlements and the tax code within six to eight months to save trillions more.

The White House would agree to cut $250 billion from Medicare and trim Social Security benefits through a change in the way their annual increase is calculated. Republicans would agree to a tax rewrite that would raise no more than $800 billion while lowering rates, a number blessed by Geithner, the Republican aides said.

The two sides remained divided over key details, including an enforcement mechanism to ensure the entitlement and tax targets were met. The White House rejected the Republicans’ idea that future borrowing authority be conditioned on achieving the goals, and Republicans opposed Obama’s insistence on raising taxes on high earners while keeping them at the same level for the middle class in the event the promised debt savings didn’t materialize, the aides said.

‘Grand Bargain’

On July 19, as Boehner’s staff awaited a counterproposal from Obama’s aides, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, co-leaders of the Gang of Six, stood before about 50 senators in an ornate room on the first floor of the Capitol and pitched their long- awaited “grand bargain.” Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room to commend the outline, and Treasuries rallied on expectations of a long-term debt-reduction deal.

The president’s team told Boehner’s that their bottom line had changed based on the framework, a message Obama delivered to the speaker in person the next day at the White House, the Republican aides said. An administration official said the senators’ plan had changed the political dynamics in the push for a deal, making it harder to attract Democratic support for a proposal with a smaller revenue increase.

Obama Rebuffed

Still, Obama had no inkling Boehner was abandoning the talks until he began having trouble getting the speaker on the phone and Jackson stopped returning e-mails beginning the evening of July 21. Boehner’s office informed the president on July 22 at about 3:30 p.m. that the speaker would call Obama in two hours. Obama said he wanted to talk to Boehner right then and was rebuffed, administration officials told reporters.

The call came in as scheduled, not long after House Republican leadership aides finished briefing reporters about Boehner’s decision.

“Up until sometime early today when I couldn’t get a phone call returned, my expectation was that Speaker Boehner was going to be willing to go to his caucus and ask them to do the tough thing, but the right thing. I think it has proven difficult for Speaker Boehner,” Obama said at the White House.

“In the end,” Boehner wrote in a letter to Republican lawmakers detailing his decision, “we couldn’t connect.”

--With assistance from Mike Dorning, Kate Andersen Brower and Laura Litvan. Editors: Robin Meszoly, Mark McQuillan

To contact the reporter on this story: Julie Hirschfeld Davis in Washington at Jdavis159@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva@bloomberg.net

July 23, 2011, 1:12 AM EDT
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By Daniel Ten Kate and Nicole Gaouette

(Adds comments from State Department official in sixth paragraph.)

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned today that escalating tensions in the South China Sea risk disrupting trade flows and called on Asian countries to clarify territorial claims.

“The United States is concerned that recent incidents in the South China Sea threaten the peace and stability on which the remarkable progress of the Asia-Pacific region has been built,” Clinton told a regional security forum in Bali, Indonesia. “These incidents endanger the safety of life at sea, escalate tensions, undermine freedom of navigation, and pose risks to lawful unimpeded commerce.”

Clinton commended China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations for agreeing to guidelines for joint activities in the waters last week and urged them to accelerate a legally binding code of conduct. She called on countries to “exercise self-restraint” and avoid occupying uninhabited islands in the disputed waters.

The U.S.’s alliance with the Philippines and naval power in the Asia-Pacific has led to tensions with China, which claims most of the South China Sea as its own. The Philippines and Vietnam have pushed ahead with oil and gas exploration over objections from China, which has used patrol boats to disrupt hydrocarbon survey activities in disputed waters.

‘Clarify Claims’

Clinton called on the countries “to clarify their claims in the South China Sea in terms consistent with customary international law, including as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention,” Clinton said, according to prepared remarks that were given to reporters. “Consistent with international law, claims to maritime space in the South China Sea should be derived solely from legitimate claims to land features.”

Clinton is asking states to lay out their claims very clearly and unambiguously and to explain the legal basis for them, said a State Department official present for meetings on the South China Sea. That will force countries to look carefully at their approach, especially given that almost all claims to the waters are exaggerated, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. has not ratified the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention.

‘Nine-Dash Map’

China last week rejected an attempt by the Philippines to have the UN’s International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea decide on the territorial dispute. The Philippines plans to ask another UN arbitration panel to demarcate disputed areas of the sea “to prove our claim,” Foreign Secretary Albert F. del Rosario said on July 20.

Along with the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia have released statements to the UN saying China’s “nine-dash map” of the waters has no basis in international law.

China says its claims “are supported by abundant historical and legal evidence,” according to an April submission to the UN. It said the Philippines “started to invade and occupy” its islands in the 1970s.

Chinese ships cut survey cables of Vietnam Oil & Gas Group vessels twice in the past few months and in March chased away a boat working for U.K.-based Forum Energy Plc that was surveying the area. A Chinese frigate fired warning shots at Philippine trawlers on Feb. 25.

China’s actions in the waters provoked protests in Hanoi over the past month and prompted a group of Filipino lawmakers to travel last week to the disputed Spratly Islands, which are also claimed by Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam and China. All those countries except Brunei have troops stationed in the area.

“We believe that it’s important to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China,” Liu Weimin, spokesman for Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, told reporters yesterday after his meeting with Clinton. “I sense that the U.S. side understands the sensitivities of these issues.”

--Editor: Ben Richardson, Jim McDonald

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bali at dtenkate@bloomberg.net; Nicole Gaouette in Bali at ngaouette@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net