I'm glad he does, cuz I don't!

By Carl 

President Obama sees common ground on debt reduction and the budget: 

Democrats and Republicans agree that $4 trillion needs to be slashed over roughly a decade, Obama told a town hall-style event in Virginia. But the two parties disagree on what to cut to get there.

"The big question that is going to have to be resolved is: how do we do it?" Obama told students at a community college. "I don't want to lie to you, there is a big philosophical divide right now."

The president was promoting his plan for cutting the deficit a day after Standard & Poor's threatened to strip America of its prized triple-A credit rating. The Wall Street ratings agency cited concern that Washington's polarized politics would make it difficult to reach a debt deal before the 2012 presidential election.

Obama, who is traveling around the country this week to advocate his deficit proposals, did not show any greater flexibility over his demands that taxes go up for the wealthiest Americans. 

Unless by common ground, he means that the two sides agree on the $4 trillion, I don't see how there's common ground here. Republicans are between Iraq and a hard place, needing to make their Teabagger constituency happy without cutting defense spending, Medicare entitlements or raising taxes.

Democrats have the luxury of standing around, tapping their watches and sighing imaptiently.

Lest you think this is another political kabuki, this year's budget is it. This is the whole enchilada for the progressive movement in this nation. If we allow the Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts, then we have no business being a movement.

Sure, there's some posturing involved: I don't think the Republicans can let this budget go without some attempt at face-saving for their centerpiece platform plank of lower taxes, which has proven over the past thirty years to neither create jobs nor improve the economy much. I think even they know it, and that they're shamelessly pandering to the corporatocracy and the orc minions who somehow believe if they're fervent enough, their overlords will shower gelt upon them.

Likewise, much of the "senior scarifying" that the Dems have been doing is a mask to the very real growth of Medicare and what that bodes for the future of the budget.

I'm not suggesting that we have to have entitlement cuts immediately (frankly, I haven't studied the problem enough to have an opinion) but what I am suggesting is, given the current anti-tax climate, it's going to be hard to justify the kinds of benefits we have to pay out in a few years. When does it become enough? At fifty percent of the budget? We're tracking perilously close to that, which means we're sopping up funds for other critical progressive programs like energy reform and infrastructure repair. I would like this not to have to come down to clean air for our children and grandchildren versus keeping me alive on a ventilator.

All that said, this is an urgently important budget coming upon us, because what grows out of it will impact the next decade's worth of budget proposals and likely the economic growth for the next century, and along with it, the income and well-being of every American.

As Ben Bradlee said during Watergate, "Nothing's riding on this except the... future of the country.

So if you've been holding onto someone's balls for a rainy day, well, the clouds have gathered.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

A failure of leadership: Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman on Obama, the budget, and the government shutdown that never was

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I haven't written much on the budget/shutdown, mainly because I just haven't had much to say. I never thought a shutdown was likely. Boehner was certainly facing enormous pressure from the right, but most Republicans understood that a shutdown would hurt them politically (if not the country generally), and it was inevitable that a Democratic Party that fears confrontation and that is, for better or worse, all about compromise, would give in. And that's just what happened.

So who won? -- a question Jon Stewart amusingly looked into last night. Well, the Republicans, perhaps, as they came away with fairly significant concessions from the Democrats (even if this was just about domestic discretionary spending), but many on the right aren't happy, whether over the continued funding for Planned Parenthood or over the fact that spending wasn't cut even more -- and while Boehner emerges intact, it's not clear how long he'll be able to hold off the Tea Party. But I'm not really sure the Democrats lost. A shutdown would have been bad for everyone, and so avoiding a shutdown without giving up too much is a sort of "win" for them, as long as they can take the fight to the budget battle still to come and thence into 2012.

And Obama? For a president who is all about compromise, yet another compromise is also a win, and he'll now be able to position himself to secure even greater support from independents when the time comes. He stepped in when he needed to, acted like the mature adult in a world of petulant children, and, however this may irritate progressives (myself included), accepted a deal that will benefit him politically at the expense of fighting the Republicans' disastrous agenda.

That's just the way I see it. I'm not saying I like it.

And the big political problem, it seems to me, is that, once again, Democrats just caved without much of a fight at all, even a symbolic one, except over Planned Parenthood (which, to be fair, is worth fighting for, but it's not the be-all and end-all of federal budget issues), allowing Republicans to secure the upper hand, and a fairly significant "win," despite the fact (forgotten by the media, it seems) that they're still the minority party (controlling the House but not the Senate or the White House) -- even after last November's "shellacking." At TNR yesterday, Jon Chait offered a number of reasons for why this happened. Yes, Democrats are generally more conciliatory (to their credit, perhaps, if not so much in the crucible of legislative politics), and, yes, the issue generally favours Republicans (who can spin their economic and fiscal agenda as "small government" (and who likes taxes? who likes government (until you realize what it does for you)?). But this, to me, is the most convincing explanation:

Republicans were able to credibly threaten a shutdown of the government. That willingness to impose harm on the entire country if they didn’t get a sufficiently friendly outcome proved to be powerful bargaining leverage, moving the goalposts progressively closer to them.

In other words, Republicans are just tougher negotiators, willing to push the country to the brink, or at least to bluff that way, to get their way. It's a game of chicken, and Republicans know that Democrats swerve first. Of course, Democrats should have known better. They should have called that bluff and challenged Republicans to shut down the government. Sure, the government may then have been shut down, but wouldn't Democrats then have "won" politically? At the very least, they would have had a strong case to take to the American people.

But, no. Not this time. Not ever, it seems.

And it doesn't help that Obama himself wasn't really up for a fight. As Paul Krugman writes:

What have they done with President Obama? What happened to the inspirational figure his supporters thought they elected? Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn't seem to stand for anything in particular?

I realize that with hostile Republicans controlling the House, there's not much Mr. Obama can get done in the way of concrete policy. Arguably, all he has left is the bully pulpit. But he isn't even using that -- or, rather, he's using it to reinforce his enemies' narrative.

His remarks after last week's budget deal were a case in point.

Maybe that terrible deal, in which Republicans ended up getting more than their opening bid, was the best he could achieve -- although it looks from here as if the president's idea of how to bargain is to start by negotiating with himself, making pre-emptive concessions, then pursue a second round of negotiation with the G.O.P., leading to further concessions.

And bear in mind that this was just the first of several chances for Republicans to hold the budget hostage and threaten a government shutdown; by caving in so completely on the first round, Mr. Obama set a baseline for even bigger concessions over the next few months. 

I still think Obama succeeded politically, continuing to set himself up nicely for re-election next year. But Krugman is right that he weakened himself and his party over the long run, essentially giving Republicans still more confidence that they can they way, or at least a great deal of their way, just by controlling the House.

It will take more time to sort out who "won" and who "lost" this shutdown battle, but with an absence of principled, determined leadership in the White House, the losers ultimately are the American people, who need something other than the Republican agenda and who have a president who is apparently unwilling to fight for anything at all.

Words to live by, words to regret

By Carl 

Obama: 'Inexcusable' not to reach budget deal:

"At a time when the economy is still coming out of an extraordinarily deep recession, it would be inexcusable -- given the relatively narrow differences when it comes to numbers between the two parties -- that we can't get this done," Obama said last night at the White House.

Obama has played this budget debacle exactly right, in my opinion, and it's paying huge dividends for Democrats across the nation. He has come off as statesman-like and put no political capital on the line here.

Conservative pundits have been screeching like seagulls about how Obama needs to be more involved, how it's wrong of him to go off to fundraisers for 2012 while the nation faces a crisis, yaddayaddayadda.

First, one wonders where these asshats were during the 6 1/2 years that Bush spent down in Crawford through things like Katrina, but I digress.

The Constitution is pretty clear about the delineation of budget responsibilities: it falls to Congress. What the conservative tactics tell me is, Pelosi and Reid have been playing hardball, drawing lines in the sand and refusing to commit to anything beyond them.

Those lines must be pretty fair ones, too, for moderates or we'd hear a lot of complaining about how entrenched the Dems are being, how special interests are playing fast and loose with the budget and so on. As well, we'd hear that the sides are very far apart. Obama has made a particular point of noting the narrow gap between the two sides.

Clearly, conservatives feel they can get a better deal from Obama. To his credit, he's refused to upend his Congressional leadership.

Contrast Obama with this: 

Boehner 'No daylight' between tea party and me:

"Listen, there's no daylight between the tea party and me," the Ohio Republican said in an interview with ABC News conducted Wednesday.

"None," he said, when questioner George Stephanopoulos pushed back. "What they want is, they want us to cut spending. They want us to deal with this crushing debt that's going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There's no daylight there."

I'm grinning as I write this. Boehner is from Ohio. Ohio is a battleground state. While Boehner can slather his district with pork to ensure his re-election, the one thing he cannot do is persuade people that insane folks are sane.

His seat is officially up for grabs now. By marrying himself to the Teabaggers, he will now make the Speaker of the House of Representatives officially responsible for every hate-mongering sign, every slanderous blogpost, each and every outrageous stunt the Teabaggers pull, in and out of Washington, D.C.

There's eighteen months. That's practically an eternity in national politics nowadays. He's hitched his wagon to a failing star whose light is dimming after the supernova of 2010. The Koch brothers' money is running out, or else Glenn Beck would still have his job at FOX and Wisconsin would still be electing Republicans.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

GOP validates America's hatred of Congress

By Nicholas Wilbur

The Republican Party has validated the American public's growing frustration, annoyance, and near-historically low disapproval of Congress with a bill proposed this week that epitomized the do-nothing reputation and partisan bickering of politicians on Capitol Hill.

The proposal, which Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia touted as a safety measure against the looming threat of a government shutdown, would make the Republican Party's February budget proposal the "law of the land" if Congress fails to enact a budget resolution before current government funding expires on April 8.

The Republican Party's February budget proposal, H.R. 1, called for $61 billion in discretionary spending cuts, most of which targeted popular social programs that the Democratic Party vehemently opposed. The bill earned a veto threat from President Obama even before it passed in the House, and after it passed it was deemed dead-on-arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Nobody so much as blinked when the bill died on the Senate floor due to a lack of bipartisan support.

So what will it take to pass this new proposal and to avoid the potentially devastating effects on the economy and job creation if a government shutdown occurs?

In short, a miracle.

In order to become law, Cantor's bill requires that the same Democrats who so staunchly opposed the GOP's $61 billion in spending cuts on March 17 then turn around not two weeks later and vote for those very same cuts.

Not even Rod Serling could have thought up this one.

But lest you should be fooled by the media's claims that this is yet another "symbolic" measure put forth by the ever-unserious GOP, Cantor was quoted Wednesday telling reporters, "We are serious."

The Hill reported that "aides could not immediately explain how their new bill would solve the crisis or whether they expected the Senate to approve it."

 

According to Cantor spokeswoman Leana Fallon, "[I]t is our hope that this bill will, at a minimum, spur the Senate to pass some bill funding the government for the rest of the year so that we can work quickly to resolve any differences." If Congress fails to act, she added, "passing this bill would at least keep the government open."

 

She is correct. Passing this bill would indeed keep the government open. Unfortunately, it would also eliminate the incentive for Republicans to continue negotiations with Democrats. If their original proposal becomes law, there is no need to "spur the Senate to pass some bill funding the government," because Republicans can sit out the remainder of the talks, wait for current funding to expire, then throw a party for their Tea Party constituents when health-care reform is defunded, the Environmental Protection Agency is gutted, and a slew of other social programs are forced to cut core services and, in effect, jobs, on April 9.

 

Putting a new title on an old policy won't change the hearts and minds of Democrats in the Senate. It won't convince the public that Republicans are serious about reaching common ground on the budget. And it definitely won't quell the animosity that Americans feel toward Congress. (According to the latest Gallop poll, Congress has an 18 percent approval rating.)

 

If there is a silver lining to this cloud, it's that voters across the nation, particularly Virginia voters, and especially deficit-hawk conservative voters, begin calculating a taxpayer-based cost-benefit analysis of the type of leadership that comes with paying majority party leaders a salary of $193,000 a year.

 

Or maybe Cantor needs a pay raise.

 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Geraldine Ferraro (1935-2011)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Geraldine Ferraro, the U.S. representative from New York's 9th District from 1979-85 and the first woman to to run on a major party presidential ticket, losing with Walter Mondale to Reagan and Bush in 1984, has died at the age of 75:

Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former Queens congresswoman who strode onto a podium in 1984 to accept the Democratic nomination for vice president and to take her place in American history as the first woman nominated for national office by a major party, died Saturday in Boston.

She was 75 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for 12 years, her family said in a statement. She died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she had been undergoing treatment since Monday.

"If we can do this, we can do anything," Ms. Ferraro declared on a July evening to a cheering Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. And for a moment, for the Democratic Party and for an untold number of American women, anything seemed possible: a woman occupying the second-highest office in the land, a derailing of the Republican juggernaut led by President Ronald Reagan, a President Walter F. Mondale.

I don't wish to speak ill of her, but I never much cared for her. She was never all that liberal and in fact called herself a conservative (and, at least early on, "a tough Democrat," that is a right-leaning Democrat who leaned Republican at least in terms of temperament). And she was simply appalling in her support for Hillary (and in her various attacks on Obama) during the '08 Democratic primaries, proving to be something of a racist, and ending up just embarrassing herself and being dumped from the campaign.

Still, she was a remarkable woman in many ways, and what she did was undeniably remarkable, too. It wasn't easy to be a prominent woman politician at that time, just as it still isn't, but she broke new ground by running on the national stage and, even before that, was a powerful voice on issues such as gender equity, the plight of seniors, and the environment. She was certainly conservative on a number of other issues, and her record was pretty much the record of an ideologically-fluctuating moderate from a fairly socially conservative district, but, whatever her flaws, she was one of the most significant political figures of her time.

Congressman Anthony Weiner, my kind of politician

By R.K. Barry

I'm a big fan of Anthony Weiner, the Democrat who represents New York's 9th Congressional District. Crooks and Liars posted a clip of Congressman Weiner taking on both Sean Hannity and Michele Bachmann on Hannity's show on Fox. It was a debate about the budget and spending cuts and who is responsible for the debt and what we should do about it. We've heard this discussion before, so it wasn't the content as much as the style that impressed me.

For a long time I have felt that Democrats were not being tough enough in their squabbles with the right. The other side makes stuff up and Democrats all too often seem to nod politely and take it. But not Congressman Weiner. No, he gives as good as he gets, and I would suggest that other Democrats, if they expect to take these goons on with any degree of success, should go to school on the Congressman from NY's 9th.

Sad to say that politics is not a particularly civilized game. It never has been and that's not going to change any time soon.

Funny that Anthony Weiner and Jon Stewart were college roommates because Weiner seems to have missed the message that we should all be more civil in our debates. I'm not counseling rudeness. But I am suggesting that progressives not take any shit from the likes of Hannity and Bachmann. Make no mistake, it takes an immense amount of toughness and skill to stand in against the kind of nonsense that this radical right tag team is spewing here. And do note that all the rudeness was coming from Hannity.

I found it ironic and vaguely Freudian that Hannity suggested at one point in their exchange that Weiner "man up." It seems to me that this is exactly what Weiner was doing, and it pissed Hannity off to no end.

The clip says it all for me.

 

(Cross-posted from Lippmann's Ghost.)

To support the military intervention in Libya or not?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm not sure what to do about Libya. I'm generally a liberal interventionist, though less of one after the Iraq War, and I do think that some humanitarian crises demand military action. But is the situation in Libya a humanitarian crisis? Or is there otherwise a good reason to intervene? Do we intervene just because we don't like Qaddafi? Or because he's an easier target than other dictators? And if in Libya, why not elsewhere -- say, in Bahrain, or North Korea?

Questions, questions, questions. As Fred Kaplan asked (and as I blogged about last week):

What is the desired goal of this action? Is it to pressure Qaddafi to stand down? Is it to provide air cover to the rebels, so they can fight Qaddafi's ground forces on more equal footing? Whatever the goal, if the no-fly zone doesn't get us there, should we try other means? And if not, why not? As Clausewitz wrote, war is politics by other means. War is fought for a political objective. If that objective is important enough to justify one form of military intervention, why not another form? What is the goal? How far are you willing to go to accomplish the goal? How important is the goal?

Is there even a goal, or we just taking this one step at a time? With Iraq and Afghanistan fresh in our memories (and with the latter war still ongoing, and not well), should we not have a better sense of what the hell we're doing? And of what the cost is going to be, or, rather, of what cost we can expect, both in human and monetary terms? (What can we expect? What are we willing to put up with?)

Regardless, I do generally support the current military effort, not least because it is not a unilateral effort but an international one with the British and French taking lead roles. The Iraq War in particular soured our appreciation for military intervention of any kind, and perhaps rightly so, but ask yourself this: Do you not want Qaddafi removed from power? Do you not think we should be not just expressing our support for the Libyan opposition but, given that Qaddafi has the power to crush it but actively supporting its efforts? Sure, there is inconsistency here. Again, we're intervening in Libya but not in North Korea, a far more horrendous state. But there will never be consistency. Almost by definition, military intervention must be ad hoc. And not intervening in North Korea, or even in Bahrain, does not mean that all intervention is thereby illegitimate.

But now let me disagree with myself. Will any good actually come of this intervention? Perhaps not, given how messy the situation is. As Josh Marshall writes, making a strong case against intervention:

No clear national or even humanitarian interest for military intervention. Intervening well past the point where our intervention can have a decisive effect. And finally, intervening under circumstances in which the reviled autocrat seems to hold the strategic initiative against us. This all strikes me as a very bad footing to go in on.

And this doesn't even get us to this being the third concurrent war in a Muslim nation and the second in an Arab one. Or the fact that the controversial baggage from those two wars we carry into this one, taking ownership of it, introducing a layer of 'The West versus lands of Islam' drama to this basically domestic situation and giving Qaddafi himself or perhaps one of his sons the ability to actually start mobilization some public or international opinion against us.

I just don't know. Even if the intentions are good, there is just so much that could go badly here. And yet, isn't that always the risk? Given our bipolar partisan political culture, we're all expected to pick a side. I'm just not sure I can. I'm for doing something, and something relatively aggressive, but I'm just not sure this is it.

I'm sorry I'm not more decisive, but it concerns me that people are being decisive without any good reason to be other than ideological inclination or pure partisanship.

But if the intervention in Libya may well be a no-win situation, what is clear is that for Obama it doesn't matter what he does, he will be severely criticized. Politically, it's an almost absolute no-win situation for him, and the only way he comes out of it looking good is it the intervention somehow succeeds without much consequential damage, which seems unlikely. The allies may be targeting Qaddafi and his forces, but at home it's Obama who's the target, and he's taking it from all sides:

-- On the left, Ralph Nader thinks Obama should be impeached for war crimes. In the House, Democrats are questioning the legality of the attacks. Dennis Kucinich is even talking impeachment.

-- On the right, John McCain, to whom the media always turn on military matters (because he apparently still has credibility), supports Obama (more or less) but thinks he waited too long to act. Richard Lugar, a devout realist, thinks we could be in for endless humanitarian war. And John Boehner wants Obama to explain U.S. objectives more clearly.

Actually, let me quote Boehner:

Before any further military commitments are made, the administration must do a better job of communicating to the American people and to Congress about our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved.

You know what? That makes sense. I'm usually extremely critical of Boehner (and of the party he leads), but Obama should indeed explain himself, and this action, to the American people. After Iraq and Afghanistan, if not generally, they deserve no less.

And it would help because while the intervention isn't unilateral, and while British and French leadership gives the U.S. some cover, the action isn't going over all that well in the Arab world:

The Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, deplored the broad scope of the U.S.-European bombing campaign in Libya and said Sunday that he would call a league meeting to reconsider Arab approval of the Western military intervention.

The last thing the U.S. needs is opposition from Arab and other Muslim states. The intervention must be seen, and must be, not just a U.S.-European effort to remove an undesirable leader but a broad international effort to support an oppressed people. Even if the allies don't have ulterior motives (oil, for example), the perception of a Western attack on yet another Muslim state, and an attempt to control that state, must be avoided. And it's understandable why many in the Muslim world might perceive this to be precisely that.

Obama has explained himself, but not sufficiently. And that, in part, is why I'm still on the fence, and I suspect why many others are as well. Yes, the U.S. was right to intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo. Yes, it is shameful that the international community ignored Rwanda. Yes, there is good reason to seek Qaddafi's ouster and to free Libya from the shackles of tyranny. But... but... but... we're living in the shadow of the misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we're right to be skeptical.

Needless to say, now that it's started I hope the intervention goes well. But we need a much clearer sense of the objectives than we have now, and we need to know how far our leaders are willing to do. Until then, we must remain vigilant in our criticism.

A budget stalemate and the hubris of freshman Tea Partiers

By Nicholas Wilbur 

It may have been obvious during the 2010 midterm campaign that the Tea Partiers were delusional, but nobody quite grasped the depth of their derangement until they rewrote a budget proposal last month that nearly doubled the amount of spending cuts originally sought by Republicans in the House, then spent the next two weeks calling on Democrats – without a hint of irony – to get serious about the nation's fiscal disorder. 

After an entire campaign dedicated to making promises about deflating the ballooning size of government, reining in Washington's excessive spending habits, and reducing the dangerously high annual deficit, the House Tea Party members put their money where their mouth was, so to speak. Except they didn't. 

While The Washington Post reported that the proposed $61 billion in spending cuts, if enacted into law, would represent "the largest rescission of federal funds since the conclusion of World War II," the proposal's effect on the deficit is akin to trying to drain the Atlantic by sticking a Slurpee straw into the Potomac. 

From a recent USA Today editorial: 

The $61 billion in spending cuts being sought by House Republicans, and being fiercely resisted by Democrats, represent just 3.7% of this year's deficit and 1.6% of total federal spending. That's not to say there shouldn't be cuts. You have to start somewhere to change attitudes. But any genuine effort to deal with the nation's exploding debt involves tackling benefit programs, reining in defense and security spending, and raising more tax revenue. 

Not only does the proposal fail the long-term litmus test by ignoring Social Security, Medicare, and defense funding – the cash-cow trifecta of federal outlays – it also fails to deliver even a short-term fix.

Run down the line of programs slated for defunding or underfunding and the same scenario emerges: these cuts, other than earning the nod from a handful of anti-ObamaCare, anti-government constituents, achieve almost nothing. (Eliminating funding for both Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting amounts to $790 million in savings, which, when translated into a percentage of the $3.7 trillion federal budget, represents a savings of two millionths of one percent.)

Beyond the dwarfish reach of the proposal, the $61 billion in cuts also happens to be an impossible request in a legislative branch that is only half-controlled by Republicans. 

No Democrat could survive the liberal revolt if they joined Republicans and voted to eliminate funding for health-care reform, Planned Parenthood, and public broadcasting; if they agreed to gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and eliminate the agency's role as an emissions regulator; or if they capitulated to Tea Party demands and ignored addressing the growing costs of entitlements and defense, which, combined, account for more than 60 percent of federal spending.

This is where the insanity is best showcased. The Democratic Party's vehement opposition to the bill was not classified or privileged information. Majority Leader Harry Reid came right out and called the bill "draconian" – essentially declaring it dead-on-arrival in the Senate after passing in the House along party lines. President Obama didn't even wait for House Republicans to approve the measure before threatening to veto the bill. To assume that the proposal had any chance of becoming law is to acknowledge that the Tea Party is indeed crazy.

But that isn't how politics works. Normally, they'd have used the proposed $61 billion in budget cuts as a benchmark. After a few days of railing Democrats in front of the cameras as tax-and-spend liberals, socialists, and clueless bleeding hearts, the Republican leadership would take over and start negotiating. That's the usual procedure. Announce your ideology-driven initiative, pressure the other party into joining the debate, then actually have a debate. After sanding off the sharp edges and eliminating the parts that both parties know will doom the bill to failure, lawmakers can then work out the finer details, the phrasing, the timeline for implementation, and then, eventually, pass a revised, responsible, and balanced piece of bipartisan legislation. 

Neither side will be fully satisfied, but the problem is addressed. That's the nature of the legislative beast. It's the beauty of democracy. And yes, it's a dirty business. Unless you actually are the messiah, as some apparently hoped of the president during his campaign three years ago, you don't escape the Capitol Hill negotiation mill without a few scars. President Obama learned this lesson with both health-care reform and tax cuts. Unlike Obama's case, however, the learning curve for the Tea Party will be sharp, painful, and fruitless. 

Perhaps the freshman lawmakers, lacking any hands-on experience with the process, thought it would turn out differently, that their bill would somehow survive the Senate, and that Obama might... I don't know, maybe faceplant from a dopamine overdose after laughing himself to death. If the bill were positioned on his desk at just the right angle, and if the pen in his ear made a mark on the signature line of the bill that the Supreme Court ruled was close enough to the left-handed president's chicken-scratch handwriting that it constituted a deliberate signature, then maybe it would be enacted into law. There's no other possible explanation for the Tea Party's ignorance in thinking that their proposals, unchanged, would go anywhere outside of the GOP-dominated House. 

The most appalling part of this Twilight Zone episode is that Republicans had two and a half weeks to work with Democrats on revising the most offensive portions of the bill, and instead of actually negotiating – the usual give-and-take of any bargaining process – Republicans used that time to bicker, accuse Democrats of obstruction, point fingers at the president for not solving everyone's problems, and generally abandon their roles as nationally elected leaders.

When the bill failed in the Senate, this was one response to the Democratic Party's refusal to accept the budget cuts: 

Paying lip service to the threat caused by the deficit is not a substitute for responsible leadership.

Those words came not from the fiery gut of a radical freshman Tea Partier. They came from the 25-year veteran lawmaker and current minority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell. 

Of course, Democrats were no better. As a means of "compromise," they proposed cutting $6.5 billion, a figure that was so shallow Republicans didn't even bother wasting their breath to scoff at it. But one can't really fault Democrats for not initiating a deal. Cutting social programs wasn't their idea, for one. For two, assuming the stereotypes of the two parties are correct, Democrats wouldn't have proposed any sort of compromise whatsoever. They'd have countered the GOP's budget cut proposal with tax hikes. 

So, here we are nearly halfway through the fiscal year, staring once again down the barrel of a government shutdown, and despite having two months to figure out what is and isn't possible when it comes to reducing spending, our leaders are proving incapable of even beginning a real debate about effective but economically responsible budget cuts. 

We're back at square one, as they say, and it seems our national leaders are playing hopscotch in the quicksand.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.) 

Credits: Image 1, Image 2. 

Wisconsin Republicans vote to take collective bargaining rights away from public-sector unions

By Michael J.W. Stickings

How did they do it? Well, by cheating, in a way. Or perhaps by committing political suicide. I'll let Ezra Klein explain:

Here's what just happened in Wisconsin: The rules of the state's Senate require a quorum for any measures that spend money. That's how the absence of the Senate's Democrats could stymie Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget law -- it spent money, and thus it needed a quorum.

But in a surprise move earlier today, Wisconsin's Senate Republicans rewrote the bill and left out all the parts that spent money. Then they quickly convened and passed the new law, which included the provisions stripping most public-employee unions of their collective bargaining rights but excluding everything in the law that spent money.

What happens next? Expect the protests over the next few days to be ferocious. But unless a judge rules the move illegal -- and I don't know how to judge the likelihood of that -- Walker's proposed law will go forward. The question is whether Walker and the Republicans who voted for it will do the same.

Polls in Wisconsin clearly showed that Republicans had failed to persuade the public of their cause. Walker's numbers dropped, while Democrats and unions found themselves suddenly flush with volunteers, money and favorable media coverage. And they plan to take advantage of it: Eight Wisconsin Republicans have served for long enough to be vulnerable to a recall election next year, and Democrats have already begun gathering signatures. Now their efforts will accelerate.

As indeed they should. But will Democrats succeed?

I really do think Republicans overreached here. They thought it would be easy to take down the public-sector unions, to deprive them of their very essence (the right to bargain collectively on behalf of their members, who on their own would never have such strength and who, as we know from pre-union days, would be abused in one way or another by their employers) -- perhaps just to stick it to them, perhaps as an opening shot against organized labor generally, perhaps to weaken the Democratic Party. But the grand right-wing conspiracy was exposed, backed by the Koch brothers and pushed by Republican business and other anti-government interests, and also by a popular governor who apparently without knowing it put his political career on the line.

To their credit, the people of Wisconsin rallied in support not just of their public-sector unions but of labor unions, and labor, generally. Republican legislators look bad, Walker himself looks especially bad, and all over the country Republicans who expressed their support for this assault and who are linked to the Koch brothers are implicated in what has become a deeply unpopular move.

The Republicans may have acted within the law by removing the money parts from what was a budget bill -- as if that makes any sense -- but their motives are clear and I suspect the people of Wisconsin will hold them accountable.

When those Democrats fled the state to prevent the state Senate from having a quorum, who knew where all this would lead? As people came to understand what the issue was all about, and just what these Democrats opposed, it didn't take long for the Republicans, both in Wisconsin and elsewhere, to expose themselves for what they are, which is the enemy of working people everywhere, the party of the plutocrats, the party of the Koch brothers.

Republicans traditionally hype the supposed "culture wars" to divert the attention of the non-wealthy away from economic issues and their pro-business, plutocratic ways, scaring low-information voters into their corner, whether it's civil rights or terrorism or any other "threat" to America. They're still doing that -- just look at what IRA-backer Peter King is doing -- and they've been successful doing it, but this time they seem to have awakened a self-awareness in the electorate that will not easily be denied.

Democrats push for recall of Republican state senators in Wisconsin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Greg Sargent:

The Wisconsin Democratic Party has decided to throw its weight behind a nascent grassroots drive to recall a number of GOP state senators, a move that will considerably increase the pressure on them to break with Governor Scott Walker, the Dem party chair confirms to me.

"The proposals and the policies that Republicans are pushing right now are not what they campaigned on, and they're extreme," the party chair, Mike Tate, said in an interview. "Something needs to be done about it now. We're happy to stand with citizens who are filling papers to recall these senators."

Previously, Wisconsin Dems had not publicly supported talk about recalling GOP Senators, in hopes of privately reaching a negotiated solution to the crisis. The Wisconsin Democratic Party's decision to support the recall drives represents a significant ratcheting up of hostilities and in essence signals that all bets are off.

You know what's great about this? For once, Democrats aren't putting up with Republicans' shit, with their efforts to implement an extremist right-wing agenda that voters strongly oppose (and only support when the GOP's propaganda, pushed through a willing media establishment, screws with their heads).

And also, for once, Democrats are actually winning the issue and driving the narrative, sending Republicans into fits of defensive desperation.

Feels good, doesn't it?

The straw that broke the liberal's back?

By Nicholas Wilbur

A band of liberal revolutionaries is storming the Capitol, hip-checking elderly Tea Party activists and snatching the anti-Obama protest signs right from their arthritic hands. They're chanting, screaming, wailing – "Traitor," "Vile Betrayer," "No-bama, No-bama..." – and tearing the cloth from their breasts in agony as they fall to their knees, pound the earth with clenched fists, and curse the gods of progressivism for the posturing con artist occupying the White House. American flags burn in the background. Hope and Change T-shirts burn in the foreground. Blue flames crisscross like daggers in the sky as the ominous clouds form like cyclones above the White House. The governors who have gathered with Obama inside the State Dining Room are all smiles and nods as the president explains his openness to the idea of letting individual states create their own health-care laws in lieu of the ever-unpopular "ObamaCare" legislation, while everyone outside hoists pitchforks and decries the unraveling of populism, not as they know it, but as they imagine it.

When I saw the headline from The Hill, "Obama backtracks on health mandate, wants to allow earlier opt-out," this was the fantasy my conscious mind created as it envisioned the reaction of the news from left-wing diehards, bleeding hearts, and feverish bloggers.

The already fine line between fantasy and political reality draws paper thin the more time President Obama spends in the White House. The details don't matter to the extremists on the left who envisioned Obama during the campaign as a messiah of modern American leadership. Politics today is less about policy than it is about perceptions, and the president's admission that his health-care law could be altered or amended if such adjustments helped the country implement across-the-board reforms serves only to ignite the flames of doubt and fuel the fires of intra-party betrayal in the eyes of uncompromising liberals.

He's already guilty of compromise, negotiation and capitulation – the trifecta of evil that is embodied, historically, by those whose souls are either sold to the powerful deal-makers within Washington or bought by the corporate lobbyists without. We saw it first when he gave up on the single-payer health care option. We saw it a second time in his deal with Republicans to cut taxes for the rich. We're seeing it again with this appeal to bipartisanship over implementation of what is arguably the most historic piece of social legislation enacted in Congress since civil rights.

For the lefties who voted for, campaigned for, and prayed to their Wiccan goddesses for a progressive panacea to the Bush era, this may prove to be the straw that broke the liberal's back.

And yet it means nothing to the pragmatists who understand that consensus is key to any law and that popularity is paramount to any successful legislation.

Twenty-five governors – representing half the country – have filed suit against the series of reforms included in the 2010 legislation that conservatives refer to as "ObamaCare." Polls consistently show an equal division of opinion on whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is good or bad for America. And minds are still unmade as to whether repeal of "ObamaCare" is better than the health insurance company abuses that plagued the country before such protections were put in place.

If it is disappointing to a certain faction of the American public that Obama has decided to continue his efforts to improve the law that will most likely define his presidency, then that in itself is disappointing. It is, after all, the liberal class in America that boasts of top placement on the intellectual hierarchy of the political – and social – ladder. They should be the first not only to understand but to appropriately analyze the limitations of bureaucracy, the stalwart opposition to change, and the restraints of progressivism. They are not only its advocates but its victims.

The president's abandonment of the single-payer option nearly split the Democratic Party in two, even if it was consistent with his campaign promise to lead by consensus, not with an iron fist. His capitulation on tax cuts nearly severed his ties not only to liberals but to fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, and he accepted that blowback as a consequence of his suddenly treasonous promise to reach out, whenever possible, to his opponents in Washington. It's worth mentioning that all of his alleged "capitulations" polled well for him, as the general public seemed to appreciate that a national leader tried to unite the country with a willingness to compromise rather than to divide the country by refusing to listen to the opposition.

It seems not every Democrat in America is liberal. (Somewhere in the world, a bird of idealism dropped dead from surprise.) 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Brilliant plan or petty scam? Republicans repackage Democratic budget ideas

By Nicholas Wilbur

Taking credit for someone else's work is called plagiarism – unless you're in politics, in which case it's called bipartisanship.

With Republicans vehement in their opposition to the Democratic Party's plans to merely shear the sheep, and with Democrats equally obstinate in their disregard for the Republican Party's plans to behead the beast, a Congressional showdown over federal spending quickly evolved into a seemingly imminent government shutdown. Even a short-term fix appeared impossible as Republicans proved unwilling to entertain any temporary plans that didn't include spending cuts while Democrats proved unwilling to accept any such budget Band-Aids that did include cuts.

From ToonRefugee.com

But then, as if by magic or some divine intervention, the stars suddenly aligned, the Potomac parted, lions began hiring lambs as anger management counselors, and the two parties put aside their budget differences and began working as one body dedicated not to corporate or ideological interests but to the people who hired them.

With a week remaining before the government ran out of money, and with no agreement in sight, Republicans proposed a plan to fund the government another two weeks as negotiations over a more permanent fix continued.

Fearful of reliving the bare-knuckle beat-down they suffered over similar budget woes in 1995, Republicans decided to avoid the backlash of another government shutdown by proposing what The New York Times described as "a carefully calibrated stopgap measure" that would fund the government for two weeks while the two parties negotiate a more long-term budget resolution.

As promised, Republicans included significant spending cuts to the short-term stopgap measure. But, as the Times noted, "[t]o make it harder for Democrats to object to the temporary plan, Republican architects of the proposal tried to make the cuts relatively painless."

As it turns out, the cuts, totaling $4 billion, weren't so much "relatively painless" as they were pleasurable. Reversing course on their insistence earlier in the week that they would not support a proposal that included any cuts, "Senate Democrats indicated they would be willing to go along with the proposal," the Times reported. Looking at the source of the proposed cuts, it isn't terribly difficult to ascertain why they had a sudden change of heart. From the Times:

(Republicans) came up with the $4 billion by ending eight education, transportation and other programs that President Obama had previously sought to close down, a savings of almost $1.2 billion. They also reclaimed nearly $2.8 billion set aside for earmarks in the current budget; both the House and Senate have agreed to ban such pet projects.

I can't decide if this is utterly brilliant or completely retarded.

It seems as if Republicans have killed three birds with one stone.

First and foremost, they quelled a potential revolt of House Tea Party members by giving them a nice, big, round number which they can throw out to their anti-government constituents as evidence of their hardline stance against excessive federal spending. It was the Tea Party, after all, that accused senior Republicans in the House of going soft on their campaign pledge to slash government spending. Four billion dollars in a two-week funding package more than does the job.

Second, Republicans needed to propose something that Democrats would support. What better way to entice Democrats to back a Republican bill than to use ideas Democrats themselves proposed? As the Times noted, the $1.2 billion in cuts originated from the president's own proposal.

Knowing that the Tea Party could squabble about a puny $1.2 billion, they cut another $2.8 billion slated for earmarks even though both parties already agreed to end the use of earmarks, and even though the president already promised to veto any legislation that landed on his desk with earmarks attached.

Republicans essentially repackaged the president's own ideas and inflated the spending cuts with earmarks that nobody was allowed to include in a budget package anyway.

If it sounds similar to mining for gold in your neighbor's backyard and selling him bullion coins at a discounted rate, it is. Stargazing is free – like breathing oxygen, blinking, and flipping off the IRS building when you drive by – but that doesn't take away from its bipartisan popularity.

This is either the masterpiece of a genius or the scheming plot of an amateur scam artist.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Are Wisconsin Republicans conspiring to kidnap?

Guest post by Publius 

Publius has lived in and spent most of his life thinking about Washington, D.C. He is an attorney, an avid sports fan, and the editor of The Fourth Branch.

(Ed. note: This is Publius's third guest post for us. You can find his first, on George Will and "engaged justices," here, and his second, on conservative support for nullification, here. -- MJWS)

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(Ed. note 2: Pro-union rallies were held around the country yesterday in a wonderful and much-needed show of support for Wisconsin's public-sector unions. We all need to stick together on this to counter not just what Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans are trying to do in Wisconsin but the broader threat to unions, and labour generally, both in that state and elsewhere, with conservatives seeking to undo the right to collective bargaining and more generally to hand more and more power back to the corporate overlords who run the Republican Party and who are so dominant within American conservatism. -- MJWS)

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By now, most everyone is familiar with the high political drama in the State of Wisconsin, where Democrats and labor continue to fend off attacks by Republicans to severely reduce the ability of workers to collectively bargain.

Only one parliamentary hurdle stands in the way of a Republican victory on collective bargaining: the Senate quorum requirement. Republicans need 3/5 of all state senators to be present during a legislative day to establish a quorum. There are currently 19 Republican senators and 14 Democratic senators, meaning they are one person shy of establishing a quorum to pass the bill reducing collective bargaining rights.

Under Rule 84 of the Wisconsin Senate rules:

The chief clerk shall immediately call the roll of the members, and note the absentees, whose names shall be read, and entered upon the journal in such manner as to show who are absent with leave and who are absent without leave. The chief clerk shall furnish the sergeant at arms with a list of those who are absent without leave, and the sergeant at arms shall forthwith proceed to find and bring in such absentees.

To avoid the strong arm of the sergeant at arms, Democrats fled from the State Capitol. Not to be deterred, the State Senate majority leader then sent the state police to the homes of the Wisconsin Democratic senators with instructions to compel such individuals to return to the Capitol. The police failed to locate a single Democratic senator, as all had reportedly left the state by the time the police arrived.

The Wisconsin Constitution expressly permits the Houses of Congress to pass rules to compel attendance by absentee legislators. Accordingly, the Wisconsin Senate rules do grant power to the sergeant at arms to compel Senate attendance of wayward senators. No other person or group, including the state police, has authority under the Senate rules to compel attendance.

The jurisdiction of the sergeant at arms is debatable. There is a strong argument that his power is limited to the confines of the Capitol grounds. Outside of the Capitol grounds, the sergeant at arms may be powerless to compel any action.

The debate is moot, however, because Senate Republicans did not use Capitol police under the direction of the sergeant at arms to compel attendance. Instead, they attempted to use the Wisconsin State Police. Unfortunately for Senate Republicans, there is no law or rule which would permit the state police to compel a Democratic senator to return to the Capitol Building. Actually, the analysis is even more concrete: The Wisconsin Constitution prohibits the arrest of any member of the Wisconsin Senate while the legislature is in session. As provided in Article 12, Section 15: 

Members of the legislature shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest; nor shall they be subject to any civil process, during the session of the legislature, nor for fifteen days next before the commencement and after the termination of each session.

The Democratic senators are not committing treason, a felony, or a breach of the peace by avoiding the Senate. There may be political ramifications (including a recall election, for example), but that's a far cry from asserting criminal ramifications.

Without the power to compel Democratic senators to return to the Capitol, the state police could find themselves in violation of Wisconsin criminal laws -- possibly including kidnapping. Under Section 940.31 of the Wisconsin Criminal Code, kidnapping occurs when a person:

By force or threat of imminent force carries another from one place to another without his or her consent and with intent to cause him or her to be... held to service against his or her will.

Each of those elements would seem satisfied if the state police were to force a Democratic senator to return to the Capitol to participate in a quorum call (i.e., service against his or her will).

If not kidnapping, perhaps false imprisonment, which is defined in Section 940.30, as an act which occurs when a person "intentionally confines or restrains another without the person's consent and with knowledge that he or she has no lawful authority to do so..."

Of course, if the police were to be found guilty of a crime, the State Senate Republicans would by extension be guilty of conspiracy in connection with that crime (see, e.g., Sections 939.05 and 939.31).

No, I don't expect any actual criminal charges to be filed, nor do I expect that a state police officer would actually arrest and transport a Democrat to the Capitol even if he found a Democratic Senator within Wisconsin (though I didn't expect the police to go looking, either).

That said, it's fairly ironic that the Democrats are often being cast as lawbreakers in this drama and are being forced to take political refuge in a neighboring state. People may disagree with what Democrats are doing. Some may even consider the Democrats' actions to be cowardly, petty, childish, abusive, dilatory, or, alternatively, brave, valiant, significant, dutiful, or a host of other adjectives. But unquestionably their acts are lawful -- and Republican efforts to compel Senate attendance by using the Wisconsin State Police are not.

(Cross-posted at The Fourth Branch.)